


The Strength of (un)Broken Bonds

by Blue



Series: Angelus ex Machina [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dance Magic Dance, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Parabatai Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 03:34:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 38,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13604676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue/pseuds/Blue
Summary: Demons have disappeared from the city and the local Shadow World has discovered the hard way that the only thing worse than demons is an institute of Shadowhunters with no demons to fight. But that situation is (hopefully) temporary. The whole thing with the parabatai bond being weird is something else entirely.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before season 3, so it doesn't take that canon into account.
> 
> Thanks to Bonibaru for some excellent beta work. This was my first fic in a loooong time and both the help and the cheerleading was deeply appreciated!
> 
> See the end notes for a minor mental health content warning.

Magnus portaled into the loft's living room around 1am, yawning, with the smell of putrid lilac still clinging to him. The odor was an unpleasant side effect of the surprisingly complicated cure for a magically induced case of mange that one of the local werewolves had contracted while traveling in Europe recently after he'd angered one of Magnus' compatriots. On the somewhat bright side, Magnus had _induced_ it before so it was easy enough to recognize, but removing it was considerably less entertaining and the volatile cure had been prematurely uncapped and aspirated on contact with the air. While it had cured the mange, it had also coated everything in the room, including Magnus. Fortunately it was harmless but the smell was… distinctive.

He tried banishing the scent again but the potion's innate magic resistance meant it persisted and he wrinkled his nose in annoyance. Hopefully a shower would get it out of his hair and off his skin but his clothes might not be salvageable. At least they'd been in a small back room of the club at the time; he'd locked up afterward but it would have to be scrubbed top to bottom by hand before it could be used again. And there was definitely a cleaning surcharge being added to the wolf's bill.

He headed into the bedroom, stripping off his shirt as he went, and froze just inside the doorway at what had become the rare sight of Alec sleeping sprawled out in their bed. Well now, that improved Magnus' night significantly. For over a month, Alec had only been managing a few hours a night at most, usually dropping off wherever he was once he'd finally managed to exhaust himself.

Moving as silently as possible, Magnus slipped through to the bathroom, shutting the door with only the quietest click before turning on the shower, a whisper of magic muffling any noise that might make its way through the walls. He quickly stripped everything off, then summoned an airtight box to stash the clothes and jewelry in. He took the fastest shower he could — with a brief pause to throw the forgotten ear cuff in the general direction of the vanity — while still scrubbing every square inch of skin and thoroughly washing his hair, twice. He stepped out, hand hovering over a towel, and then ended up just banishing the water, shoving back the hair that flopped down into his eyes as he eased back into the bedroom.

Along with the sleeplessness, Alec had been running hot for the last month which at least had the side benefit of him sleeping nude with just a sheet to cover him, and usually kicking that partially or all the way off soon enough. Magnus had seen a great deal of a half- and fully naked Alec recently, but there had also been a lot of associated distractions so the opportunity to savor the sight of the five miles of bare skin currently spread out on blue satin sheets was far too rare in his opinion. Tonight, for the time being, he was sleeping on his stomach, arms folded up under his pillow, the long slope of his back picking up the moonlight. Of course, the only thing better than the visual appeal was getting to slide into bed and settle himself all along Alec's warm, hard body, which Magnus did cautiously, far too aware Alec likely wouldn't be able to get back to sleep if he woke up.

Magnus didn't have a chance to savor it for long though as an ongoing case of exhaustion and the comfort of actually having his bedmate to cuddle put him out soon enough.

Sometime later Magnus woke with a slight shiver to find his personal furnace missing and having been gone long enough that the other half of the bed had cooled down. Not much time could have passed since the sun still wasn't up, but he could hear huffed breathing coming from the lounge, which usually indicated Alec engaging in structured physical exercise. Magnus groaned and pulled the nearest cover he could reach up over himself and flipped the pillow Alec had been using over his head. If he couldn't have Alec himself at least he'd have the smell of him.

The next time he woke up there was still a pillow over his face but he could feel that the sheet was missing and there was a body draped over his legs with a mouth wrapped around his cock. Magnus batted at the pillow, finally managing to curl up from under it, and blinked down at Alec. Alec's face was shadowed away from the light filtering in through the doorway but the way he hummed around Magnus' cock certainly seemed smug. Alec knew Magnus loved being awoken this way, but it was a mark of how out of control things had been lately that Magnus did feel a brief pang for the lost sleep. He flopped back down, on top the pillow this time, groaning mostly in appreciation. If he was going to be awake, at least he was having fun.

It didn't take too terribly long; Magnus had been tired enough that he hadn't actually gained consciousness until he was almost fully hard and Alec's general obsession with being perfect at all things had definitely paid off in Magnus' favor when it came to blow jobs. Magnus was still coming back down from the orgasm when Alec slid up and braced himself on his elbows to hover over Magnus and grin.

"Good morning."

"And good morning to you, Alexander," Magnus said. Alec's cock pressed hard between them as he dropped his hips down and and bent to kiss Magnus deeply, sharing the taste of semen in his mouth, hips rolling, the whole thing light years away from tender and into entirely pornographic territory. It was fantastic but he couldn't see anything, which was a tragedy.

Alec finally pulled up for air and Magnus pushed at one shoulder. "Oh no, you wake me this time of the morning and I get a show out of it."

Alec snorted and fell sideways, rolling onto his back next to Magnus. "I'm sorry, I wasn't aware of that rule."

Magnus turned on one of the lamps. The soft, golden light spilled out strong enough that his eyes took a moment to adjust. "Understandable since I just made it up," Magnus said rolling over onto his side to better take in the view of Alec spread out and obediently raising his hand to start idly stroking his own cock. "It's a good rule, though. I'm definitely going to have it engraved somewhere."

Alec started to say something else but then was clearly distracted, biting at his lip, his hips lifting despite the fact the strokes were still far too light and too dry to really be winding him up. It was likely he'd been sweating through at least an hour of slow burn arousal before he'd come in to wake Magnus with his mouth. That was a thought Magnus was going to have to revisit later when he was more awake.

Magnus still felt like his brain was swaddled in cotton batting but he managed to summon the lubricant to hand and popped it open to drizzle a messy amount down Alec's erection, spilling it across the backs of his fingers. Alec groaned at the now slick slide of his fingers, said breathlessly, "Can I—"

It took a couple of moments before Magnus realized Alec was asking him _how_ he wanted to watch Alec masturbate. Magnus had been more thoroughly laid in the last two months than he ever had in his life (which was saying something, honestly, considering they most assuredly hadn't spent the entire time in bed, unlike those entirely unexpected weeks with several charming and highly imaginative individuals he'd fallen in with at a local festival in Romania), not to mention he'd quite literally just orgasmed a handful of minutes before. He still had to pause for a moment to let that thought roll through him. As soon as his brain rallied, Magnus said, "Spread it out properly. Use your whole hand."

Alec, following orders like a good little soldier, wrapped his delightfully large hand around his cock and twisted as he slid it up and down, groaning again, back bowing slightly away from the bed. His skin was already glistening and Magnus could see a few trails of dried salt limning his muscles from the earlier exercise.

"Good, now just your fingertips," Magnus said, his own hand coming up to weave some tendrils of magic around Alec's testicles, teasing. Alec, already panting, lightened his touch even as one foot scudded restlessly against the sheets in frustrated arousal, thighs spreading a little wider. Oh, he'd definitely been fighting it for a while before waking Magnus up.

"So good for me, Alexander," Magnus murmured and the flush on Alec's face deepened the way it always did when Magnus pulled out that particular card, his eyes sliding closed and hand tightening briefly on the base of his cock as he took a deep breath to stave off orgasm. The blue tendrils slid up Alec's shaft, tightening and tugging irregularly, until it looked like Alec had managed to fall just back from the edge, eyes coming back open even if they were hazy and unfocused.

"Now both hands," Magnus said, magic gripping Alec's testicles pointedly, humming approvingly when he took the hint and slid his other hand down through the blue tendrils to cup himself. Alec was panting, hand looking like it was just tight enough around his cock to leave him dying for more, sweat collecting in the dips and hollows of his body, the half faded runes on his torso blending into his flushed skin.

Giving in to his own desires, Magnus leaned up and nipped at Alec's earlobe before whispering, "Bring yourself off for me, sweetheart, I want to watch." Alec's hand immediately tightened around his cock and he started stroking himself hard and fast. His head pushed back against the bed, his whole body straining as he chased an orgasm.

Magnus left off his magical contribution to the cause as he was entirely distracted by the vision of Alec coming undone by his own hand. He could see the moment it stopped being a chase and became an imminent fact, body tightening down rather than straining, and Magnus knew if it were his hand wrapped around Alec, he'd be feeling the last, impossibly harder pre-orgasmic swelling.

Alec came with a sharp cry, body sagging almost immediately afterward, chest heaving as he struggled to get his breath. Magnus took the time to do a luxurious, fully body sweep of Alec with his eyes, then cleaned off the semen and lubricant with a flick of magic. Alec continued to lay there for a moment, panting, hand still wrapped around his softening cock like he'd lost all energy to move. It wouldn't last long but Magnus mentally patted himself on the back for a job well done and immediately took advantage of it by shifting over and draping himself over Alec's side.

After a few minutes, once his breath had finally slowed, Alec said, "Good morning. Uh, again."

"The sun's not even up." Magnus sighed. "I only approve of this hour of the day if I haven't been to bed yet."

Alec hummed noncommittally and Magnus asked, "I didn't wake you up by coming to bed, did I?"

"No," Alec said, wriggling free the arm trapped under Magnus and stretching his whole body long ways. "I don't think so anyway, not unless you got home later than usual. I came to bed about midnight, woke up a little after 2:30, and went for a run."

That reminded Magnus of the salt trails on Alec's skin and he rolled off Alec and over onto his back. "Let me guess, a six mile run then a ridiculous number of push-ups, sit-ups, and what not?" He pointed across Alec at the nightstand on the far side and the glass of water that had just appeared there.

"Oh, thanks," Alec said, sitting up enough to drain the glass, then draining it again, slower, when it refilled itself. "Ten miles," he said once he'd sat down the glass and lain back, rolling over and curling in towards Magnus, then added a little defensively, "it's nice and cool out."

"By certain standards, yes," Magnus said, rolling over to face Alec again even as a yawn crept up on him. "Still no demon sightings?" He was certain there hadn't been — even if one had appeared and been dispatched with all due haste, word would have spread like wildfire. He would have had a text from Izzy at the minimum, let alone if anyone from the Downworld had witnessed it.

"No," he said. "We finished combing the archives yesterday. No activity lull on record exceeds thirty-five days and this is day 56. Last week's test results that Izzy and Lucy ran still showed everybody's hormone levels increasing, but thankfully slower than the initial jump. They're supposed to have new numbers today."

"Hmm, that's… not really comforting," Magnus said. He could see the effects of the orgasm — and the exercise before that — already starting to ebb as Alec turned over on his stomach, legs and feet flexing restlessly. Magnus mused, "Although if versions of this are happening every ten years or so, even much shorter ones, I'm starting to wonder if these kind of events play into the 'emotions are bad and should be repressed' ideal."

Alec's head turned and Magnus looked up to find his jaw set, eyes narrowed, and a fight brewing. In immediate hindsight, he probably shouldn't have used the doddering old fool voice there at the end. Alec's relaxation of only moments before was entirely gone and Magnus was far too tired for this. He sighed, held up a hand, and said, "No, stop, it was just idle speculation, Alexander. I was not passing judgment on you, your family, the New York Institute, Shadowhunters in general, the Council, or on every nephilim walking the Earth." He paused. "Well, maybe the Council."

Alec started to rise up. "I know how you feel about—"

"That is entirely beside the point. Take a deep breath."

Alec let out a hiss of frustration, dropped back down, and pulled the nearest pillow over his head.

Magnus scrubbed his hands over his face. It had been a long month for Shadowhunters and an even longer month for the Shadowhunter-adjacent. Any other time Alec would have agreed with him, or at least considered it as an idea, but for the last few weeks his temper had been on a hair trigger. New York's Shadow World had discovered the hard way that nephilim physiology interacted with demon energy in ways no one had previously suspected; when you abruptly and drastically altered the amount of demon energy in the vicinity of a group of Shadowhunters, they didn't adjust very quickly to the change.

A week of no demon sightings wasn't out of the ordinary. They had taken the second week as an opportunity to catch up on some projects (and some time off for the head of the Institute, which Magnus had personally enjoyed), but by the third week things had already started to become uncomfortable. By the fourth week the Downworld had started walking on eggshells around the increasingly volatile Shadowhunters that suddenly seemed to be everywhere in the city and it had only gone downhill from there. They had just rolled into week eight and the nephilim of the New York Institute had collectively lost their minds.

Meanwhile, Magnus was scrambling between increased house calls as clients were reluctant to go out more than necessary, particularly after dark, and coordinating an information network to keep the Downworld and Shadowhunters from interacting on the streets as much as possible. That wasn't even taking into account his usual duties and the truly impressive amount of sex he'd been having in the last two months.

"Have Isabelle and Lucine come up with any answers why you, blondie, and the biscuit are…" He trailed off, hand waving vaguely, not sure which direction to go that wouldn't rub Alec the wrong way. 'Worse' was the only thing that came to mind, although 'absolutely ridiculous' and 'driving everyone and especially me crazy' would have been accurate as well. It was entirely ironic they also happened to be the three with the most responsibility for keeping everyone else in control and out of trouble. Parts of the last two months had been fun but it was rapidly reaching the point where Magnus just wanted to _sleep_.

"No," Alec said, still under the pillow and sounding exceptionally pouty. Which, to be fair, wasn't that unusual for Alec, albeit not usually less than 10 minutes after a perfectly respectable orgasm. "Iz said yesterday they thought they'd have something today."

Both their cell phones lit up with an incoming text and Magnus fumbled his up, squinted at the screen. He wasn't even surprised to see it was from Isabelle. "It's not even 5am. Has she even _been_ to sleep?"

"Probably," Alec said, his voice still muffled under the pillow. "I think she's been sleeping the early part of the night since I gave her an 8pm curfew until things settle down. Er, settle up?"

Magnus paused in the process of starting a reply and briefly considered mentioning he'd seen Isabelle on the dance floor at Pandemonium about five hours earlier. Then decided if he tattled, she'd just sneak out and go somewhere else she was more likely to get into trouble, so discretion was probably the better part of valor here. Dancing was at least a good way to burn off the curse of excess energy every nephilim in the city was currently suffering. He finished typing the reply, reminding her that some people had multiple responsibilities that ran until the early hours of the morning and also needed normal amounts of sleep.

_**you replied awful quick for someone sleeping** _

_**I was rudely awakened by your brother** _

_**Jace is there?** _

_**ha ha. You're not getting me at 8** _

_**fine**_  
_**I checked with J and 10:30 works for him**_  
_**A's schedule looks good for then too**_

_**Ugh. Why am I giving up my beauty sleep** _

_**an advantage for the rest of us  
and it's about the lull** _

_**You do remember I'm not a Shadowhunter right?** _

_**you're putting up with A half the time you may as well be there** _

Magnus suspected his presence was a deliberate, and blatant, leak to the Downworld, but whether that meant it was good news or bad was yet to be determined. "You have a meeting at 10:30 with Izzy," he told Alec who by this point had abandoned the pillow and rolled off the bed to do more sit-ups on the floor next to it. Magnus shoved his phone under the pillow on Alec's side and then curled up under the comforter he summoned up from the bottom of the bed.

He felt Alec lean over him and bestow what was probably a kiss in the general estimated region of Magnus' cheek under the covers. "I'm gonna take a shower and head to the Institute."

"Mmmmkay," Magnus managed, calculating that if he could get through five hours with no hyperactive Shadowhunters or Downworld emergencies, it might be in region of a reasonable night's sleep. Not as much as he needed at this point, but reasonable.

An hour later, Luke came calling; only true friendship saved him and the injured wolf he was carrying from earning a one-way trip to Siberia.


	2. Chapter 2

Jace made his way to Izzy's meeting, sipping from a cup of coffee in one hand and spinning his stele between the fingers of the other. The coffee was decaf because they'd all discovered caffeine did not play well with demon lull induced mania. The mass caffeine withdrawal of most of the Institute had almost been worse. Now everybody was, well, not _calm_ , but at least it was only the effects of the lull driving everybody up the wall.

Except for Collins. Collins was an idiot that continued to drink a regular espresso every day ("Just one!" he'd said, "I've cut way back!") and Jace had already hauled his ass out of five fist fights in the last 3 days. He'd been high enough that morning that, after a seraph blade accident, Jace had hauled him to the infirmary to detox. Jace might have been rougher than strictly necessary while dragging him there and leaving him to Lucy's mercy, but it was in lieu of punching the dumbass for chronic stupidity.

Everybody — most everybody — quitting caffeine didn't do a damn thing for the other effects though. Which was why Jace took a route from the infirmary to Alec's office that went past a half dozen closets large enough for two full grown adults to fit inside. While he'd spent time in more than one Institute utility closet, he'd never been so intimately aware of the location of each and every one before this last month. Now he had a mental checklist and as he passed the next one on it he heard the tell-tale thump of a body hitting a wall, or more likely the inside of a door, and a deep moan. He stopped, sighed, backed up a couple of steps, drew a Soundless rune on the door, and continued walking.

The whole damn Institute was in the same condition so it could be argued that as long as it wasn't in the middle of Ops or in the middle of an emergency (Jace would kill for a legitimate emergency at this point), then it didn't really matter all that much. But they were still in the Institute and everybody could at least _pretend_ to have some control. An out of patience Maryse had made sure he learned that lesson the hard way at sixteen and he was very close to doing the same to the next occupied supply closet he found. The only thing stopping him was being absolutely certain no one in the Institute was as intimidated of him as he'd been of Maryse back then.

Two more Soundless runes later (maybe he and Clary could re-work the schedule and stagger everyone's breaks more?) Jace made it to Alec's office to find him leaning against the front of his desk and scowling down at a tablet. Jace hadn't seen Alec do much of anything _but_ scowl for a month or more. It was almost like having the old, perpetually grumpy Alec back. What was annoying, though, was the constant, grating irritation they were trading back and forth despite trying to keep solid mental walls up and the bond tied down.

Alec looked up and his scowl got even more pointed. "Luke just called. Kit Branwell got picked up by the NYPD last night and has been cooling his heels in temporary lock-up."

Jace closed his eyes and groaned, "Fuuuuuuuuck."

"That's what I said."

Jace's eyes snapped back open at the accusation in Alec's tone. "What, this is my fault now?"

 _"You_ are in charge of personnel and discipline," Alec said, tossing the tablet on his desk with a thump and meeting Jace head on. "As this is a serious lack of discipline then, yes, it's your fault!"

Jace gritted his teeth. "Well, Alec, I'm doing my best but this whole situation is fucked up. I'm trying to keep the patrols out and run everyone else through drills until they're half dead but there's only so many hours in the day. While you're safely holed up in your office or disappearing off to Alicante, I feel like I spend half of them breaking up fights and sound proofing doors."

"In my office or attending meetings in Alicante and _answering to the Inquisitor,_ who could decide at any moment we need oversight on the premises. Which is a thing that's always worked out _so_ well. Do I need to fucking babysit you because you can't deal with a few discipline problems?"

"A _few—"_ Jace funneled the anger through his fist and punched straight down at Alec's desk, splitting the skin of his knuckles on the wood, pain radiating out and forcing him to take several deep breaths while he stared at the floor.

Alec had turned back and leaned against his desk. When Jace looked up a few moments later, he was studying the ceiling, arms crossed, the fingers of one hand drumming against his elbow. "So," Jace said, realizing he was bleeding on the desk and bringing his hand up to bleed on his dark fabric of his shirt instead, "how's your morning going."

"Shitty," Alec said, still studying the apparently fascinating ceiling. "Yours?"

"Well, the finger wasn't fully severed so it was easy enough to fix."

Alec's eyes went wide and he looked down at Jace's hands, already reaching. "Not mine," Jace said, "I think you would have noticed that before now. But that reminds me, Lucy might be a couple of minutes late. She was ripping Collins' ass when I left the infirmary."

Alec huffed, shoulders loosening, but he snapped his fingers, other hand going to his back pocket. "Give it here."

"It's fine. You don't need _—_ "

"Jace," Alec said, holding out one hand, stele in the other.

"Fine," Jace said, bracing himself and letting Alec draw the iratze on the back of the damaged hand. Their parabatai bond was stronger than ever but, like any rune they drew on each other these days, it came with a heart stopping, mental shriek of feedback that was painful enough to make them both flinch.

Neither of them could figure out exactly when it'd started, just that it was sometime after Lake Lyn. At first it'd been quiet enough they'd barely noticed it; not surprising with the way everything had been going to Hell. But over the last few months it'd grown to a quick flash of discomfort and, by now, even knowing it was coming, the pain was a lash sharp enough Jace had to take a deep breath to shake it off afterward.

The feedback was an annoyance. The other weirdness that had been cropping up was a lot more of a problem, but Alec kept insisting it was just the lull making everything more. Jace kept pointing out it had all started way before the lull and that meant the lull ending wasn't going to magically make it better. Which meant they needed to _do_ something, but Alec had dug in his heels and was still refusing to talk about any of it.

"Do we need to retrieve Kit?" Jace asked, shaking out his hand. "And what did he get picked up for, anyway?"

"Drunk and started a fight in the wrong bar. Luke's bringing him back in a while," Alec said, picking Jace's coffee mug off the desk. He took a drink and grimaced. "This is cold."

"Serves you right for stealing my coffee. Lydia's gonna be pissed her little brother ended up in a mundane lock-up on your watch."

"I'm well aware, believe me."

"Luke's gonna give you the look that says 'I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed'."

"You're really not helping."

"At least Max is in Idris. Can you imagine the amount of trouble he'd be getting into if he were in the middle of this?"

"He's still pretty cranky about getting packed out. He's sending at least 5 fire messages a day at this point trying to convince me to let him come back sooner rather than later."

"How many of them have been attempted blackmail?"

"Just a few. He still doesn't know anything that's going to top me kissing Magnus in the middle of marrying Lydia and that was in front of half the Clave, so."

The sound of Izzy's stilettos in the hallway preceded her sailing through the door with Lucy a few steps behind. "Good morning, Asshole and Grumpy!" Izzy said, cheerfully. Jace almost asked which one of them was which today but thought better of it. She'd forgive him for siding with Alec on the curfew thing eventually. Probably. Not that she wasn't sneaking out anyway, but she was keeping a low profile while she did it to stay off Alec's radar, which was a dramatic improvement over the fight she'd started at the Hunter's Moon the previous week.

Maia had called him and yelled. A lot. None of them were allowed in now until after the lull was over, and only then because Izzy somehow hadn't done any actual property damage.

"Izzy," Alec acknowledged, picking his tablet back up. "You're looking well rested." Which was either a deliberate dig or Alec being oblivious and Jace honestly didn't know which one. He decided now was a good time to take a seat, preferably one not in the line of fire if Izzy decided to throw something at Alec.

Fortunately, Magnus picked that moment to arrive, interrupting Izzy's slow head tilt. Magnus _definitely_ didn't look well rested. He looked like he'd made half an effort at his usual flash and then given up trying before falling through a portal and accidentally ending up at the Institute. He was still wearing some jewelry at least, but his hair seemed alarmingly flat. If Alec broke Magnus, they were all going to be in trouble. Jace raised his eyebrows at him but Magnus just waved a vague hello before skirting the coffee table and slumping down next to Jace on the couch.

Clary trailed in a minute later, a very large to go cup in one hand that was guaranteed to be mostly chocolate syrup and whip cream, and a thigh holster with a seraph dagger in the other. She must have taken it off as soon as she'd gotten back in from running pointless morning patrols, which was a shame because those straps looked great over the pants she was wearing. Or any pants, really. Or no pants for that matter. Clary dropped down onto Jace's other side, tilting over so her head was resting on his shoulder, breasts pressing against his bicep. The lull had stuck her in a weird limbo — she was way more wired than most of the rest of Institute but exhausted at the same time, like too much caffeine long after you needed to sleep.

Neither of them were actually sleeping much, and so far today that had meant a screaming argument at 2:30 in the morning, which had led to sparring in the training room for an hour. They'd made a no grudges pact three weeks ago that was good until the lull was over so she didn't call him on the sneering insults to her form and he didn't complain about the hit she'd landed that had broken his nose. She hadn't been pulling that punch at all but Jace figured he probably deserved it for getting distracted enough by her cleavage she was able to get through his guard.

The sparring had led to a couple rounds of sex (one of which, admittedly, had been in a supply closet, but he knew how to draw a damn Soundless rune). It had been a lot like the sparring, actually, just with more nakedness and less bloody noses.

He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. "Hey, how'd morning shift go so far?"

"Quiet," she said with a grimace. "I mean, early patrol is always quiet but this was the same dead silence it has been, no trace of anything. Everybody had themselves under control the last I checked, though."

Jace saw a fire message appear on Alec's desk. Alec picked it up and sighed. "Max says hi."

"That's because Max is a good boy," Izzy said, twisting around in her chair to look at him, "and have I mentioned he's my favorite brother?"

"Only once or twice a day for the past several weeks."

"It bears repeating," she said, smiling sweetly at Alec and then turning back around. "Okay, since everyone's here, let's get this rolling. We finished going through the archival records and they substantiate the theoretical model that this is an atypical lull in demon activity for the New York Institute. On a more regular schedule it would have happened about a year ago, so we're currently assuming the Mortal Instruments disrupted the pattern. That this has run so long is quite possibly related to the delay — historically the lulls average out at 29 days, with a margin of difference of only 6 days, while so far it's been 56 days since the last demon sighting."

"The _good news,"_ she said, over top Alec starting to bitch about rehashing not being helpful, "is that I expect it to end pretty much any time."

There was a general sigh of relief around the table and then Clary groaned. "We probably shouldn't be celebrating the return of demons."

"Oh, I don't know," Magnus said, not bothering to lift his head from where he'd tilted over and landed on Jace's other shoulder. "Demons are a known quantity. The Downworld is used to dealing with them. But right now the Shadowhunters on the streets are… more dangerous than usual."

Alec started pacing back in forth in front of his desk and Jace realized his own foot was tapping the floor in a regular beat. "That's what we've been trying to avoid," Alec said.

"Yes, I know, and you've all been doing well but things are getting more strained as time goes on, and the chances of something, or _someone,_ blowing up keeps increasing."

Jace was fairly sure the Downworlders had thrown together a plan that had them traveling in groups and avoiding the Shadowhunter patrols as much as possible, at least after dark. He'd seriously considered just calling the patrols off until a demon tripped one of the alarms, but that would have made the Institute even more of a pressure keg, so leaving them in place had seemed like the lesser evil. He'd "accidentally" sent Magnus the patrol schedule though, just in case whoever was coordinating the whole thing had overlooked any of the routes.

"Speaking of people blowing up!" Izzy said, flinging her hands out to encompass Alec and Jace. "Lucy?"

Lucy gave Izzy an exasperated look before she said, "The latest test results indicate everyone's chemistry has finally stabilized, almost everybody within the same percentage range of change and only a narrow margin of difference. Except, of course, you three." She gestured at Jace, Alec, and Clary. "We have a theory why, but at this point there's no way to test it."

"Jace is obviously the thing we have in common," Alec said, "but the parabatai bond doesn't work that way."

Izzy waved her hand. "No, that's not exactly— look, Jace and Clary have their angel boosters. That's vector one, and it's logical it's hitting them harder considering that the sudden dramatic change in the number of demons to kill is only affecting the angel blooded in the city. Weird, but we've established it's a biological process. The parabatai bond is vector two. It's not a question of whether or not that's the source, the question is _why_ the parabatai bond is working that way. It seems to not only be transferring the effects to you but possibly also causing an overall increase between the both of you, like it's bouncing back and forth and picking up momentum on the way."

Lucy picked up the thread, "We went through the archives and spoke with the Silent Brothers, but there's not a lot of records on the actual experience of being a parabatai."

Jace wasn't at all surprised by that considering even the thought of trying to write down something that intimate made him feel naked in a way that had nothing to do with a lack of clothing. Alec finally sat down on the ledge in front of fireplace and glanced over just long enough to meet Jace's eyes before looking back at Lucy. Yeah, they were on the same page here.

"Having said that, it appears that every pair of parabatai experience it differently, but you two have always been perceived by the Silent Brothers as having a particularly strong bond. Beyond that they pretty much shrugged and said they had no idea why it was impacting Alec so hard."

"What's fascinating," Izzy added, "is it's strong enough to do this despite the fact the runes have disappeared and reappeared once, which is distinctly not a thing that happens, and observational data suggests the bond has been only grown stronger since."

Jace spun his stele between his fingers and casually failed to meet Izzy's eyes by staring into the space between her and Lucy's chairs. Not everyone knew he'd been literally resurrected on the shores of Lake Lyn, but there were enough extenuating circumstances to cover a lot of ground and everyone made their own assumptions, usually along the lines of a near death experience. But he'd been absolutely, 100% dead. Dead enough he'd come back without the most basic protections against demon possession and yet the parabatai bond had still been there.

Izzy, of course, was one of the people who did know, but he didn't think she realized Alec had died, too, that night in Magnus' loft. He hadn't lost his marks but Jace had felt him go, had felt part of himself go with Alec. He'd never questioned it when Alec and the part of his own soul that Alec owned had both come back, hadn't questioned feeling the bond knit itself back together out of nothing. He had been too busy being grateful, then too distracted fighting with Aldertree and scrambling for the Mortal Instruments. But what did you call a parabatai bond that had traveled through death twice and both times come out the other side?

Jace tuned back in to Izzy saying, "—no answers here. Whatever the reason, Alec, you and Jace's physiological responses are even more in sync than they normally would be and your body chemistry is acting like it has an angel booster."

"We knew that, Iz," Alec said, hands moving restlessly on his knees. Jace realized his own hands were doing the same thing and he clasped them together to keep them still.

"Yeah, well, now we have the data to back it up."

Alec took a deep breath. "Okay then, in terms of what we can actually deal with, the lull should be ending soon so everybody will just have to grit their teeth through the last of it."

Everyone else in the room groaned. Izzy threw her tablet stylus at Alec.

"No, I'm serious! Look, if we can just keep everyone worn out for a while then things will be manageable. Or at least not completely out of control."

Lucy raised a finger and said, "You make a good point. That is what I would suggest for the rest of the Institute. Drills and sparring seem to be the most effective so if there's any way you can increase the time spent on those activities, that's the way to go. The problem is, the management team spearheading this effort are getting the least amount of exercise and they need it the most."

Jace grimaced and he watched Alec literally squirm where he was sitting. Yeah, that was a fair hit.

"Clary's managing," Lucy continued and Clary cheered quietly, raising a triumphant fist, "but you two are not. You're barely hanging on to your tempers half the day and everyone can tell. And I'm pretty sure you used to be able to sit still for the length of a meeting."

Alec, who'd been halfway back to standing, probably to start pacing again, sat back down on the stone. "Well, then the first step is to wear ourselves out."

Magnus leaned up long enough to reach over the corner of the coffee table and pat Alec's knee consolingly. "Good luck with that." Jace almost jumped; he'd thought Magnus had fallen asleep.

Alec glared at Magnus but Clary came to his defense. "He's right. We're all ridiculous right now but you two are Energizer bunnies."

"So we'll have a sparring session—" Alec started, but was immediately interrupted by Izzy.

"The last four— four, Alec! The last four times you two sparred, 'worn out' was most definitely not the result."

"I already ran ten miles this morning, Iz, along with some other stuff. I'm talking a lot longer here. Sparring's a lot more physical and mental and if we go long enough, it will work."

Magnus sat up, leaned up over the coffee table, swirled his hand around, and a martini appeared in a small puff of blue magic. Clary lifted her head off Jace's shoulder with an incredulous, "It's not even noon!"

Magnus paused in the act of lifting the glass. "The way this whole thing is going, I'd better start now."

Jace tapped the end of his stele against his knee in a deliberately slow beat. "Multiple espressos seem like they might be a better option."

Magnus sipped his martini and flipped Jace off.

Jace smirked, said, "Wrong parabatai. He's on the other side."

Magnus looked over and kicked his legs up over the arm of the couch, doing a blatant once over of Alec while leaning against Jace like he was a convenient backrest. "Yes, yes he is."

Jace snorted, conceding defeat, while Alec messed with his tablet and pointedly ignored both of them, apparently having decided to reconfigure schedules then and there — possibly his own, possibly the whole Institute, who the hell knew with him at this point. "Okay, let me make one quick phone call and I think I can—" he jumped up without actually finishing the statement, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he stepped into the hallway.

Across from Jace, Lucy shook her head at Clary and Magnus, both currently using him as a pillow, Magnus' martini starting to list dangerously in a way that suggested he was already dozing back off. "I distinctly remember administrative meetings being more professional," she said, looking amused.

"At this point, this _is_ professional," Izzy said. "Mom visited last week and at one point Alec had a hissy fit, threw a tablet across the room, and swore a blue streak right in front of her. She was so shocked she didn't even dress him down for it."

Lucy blanched. "How do we not have Council babysitters? Or at least—" She broke off, Jace assumed because there weren't a lot of polite ways to ask why Alec hadn't had his leash drastically shortened after that kind of display by the Head of the Institute. In the Lightwood household you could get angry, you could threaten or argue, but losing your temper was a sin of the first order.

Jace went to tip her a salute, remembered he didn't actually have a free arm at the moment, and settled for a small wave. "You're welcome."

"Yeah," Izzy said, nodding. "Jace salvaged that one. Barely. But it _was_ hilarious. I think Alec lay on the floor for a full 15 minutes with heart palpitations after she left."

"Okay, I think I've got it," Alec said, coming back in. "I cleared my afternoon schedule. Clary, call back the patrols; you're in charge of wearing out everyone currently on duty since Jace will be with me. You can run them to Queens and back a few times for all I care. Have fun."

Jace dislodged Clary for a moment — she had a better grip on her coffee cup than Magnus did on his glass — to reach out his hand for Alec's tablet and take a look. Alec handed it over with the management schedules already pulled up.

"Great," said Izzy, "but I'm not seeing how this is different. Also I have lab work and I am not running to Queens and back."

"You do not have lab work. We haven't had a body for weeks and you just presented the results of both research projects you've been working on. But you're getting the full evening crew. Have fun beating the hell out of them and anybody else still more than half upright."

Izzy made a noise of reluctant interest.

"And normally we spar for an hour, or two at the most. Instead we'll—"

"Beat the hell out of each other for six hours?" Jace asked. Alec really had cleared all of his afternoon plans.

"We'll run the gamut from courtyard to training room, with and without weapons, go all in and… see where that gets us."

Jace grinned at him. "Well I'll have to hold back a little bit, otherwise I'll smear you across the floor."

"Ha ha."

Izzy sighed. "I honestly don't think this is going to work but I don't have any better ideas."

"By the fucking angel, Izzy," Alec said. "It's not like it's going to hurt. And it will work!"

"Sure, fine, whatever," she said, throwing her hands up. "Are we done here? I think we're done."

That more or less ended the meeting. Alec plucked the martini glass out of Magnus' hand and Magnus made a disgruntled noise, sitting up and reaching for it, freeing Jace to stand up. Alec handed Magnus his glass back with a grin and kissed him on the cheek before walking off and starting to dial his phone, probably trying to cram in as much work as possible before sparring. Izzy and Lucy left for their respective work spaces, although it was entirely possible Izzy was going to be nowhere to be found for the next few hours on the off chance Alec would change his mind and decide she needed to go with Clary. As much as Izzy was a fan of the training room and a good workout, she hated pointless running.

Jace was leaving with Clary to call in the patrols when Magnus caught up with them. "Well I'm off to cancel my evening appointments. When should I meet you back here, biscuit?" He stifled a yawn behind a hand.

Clary looked at Jace for an answer, trying and failing not to grin. Jace huffed out a laugh and rubbed one hand down his face. "We should be finishing up about 6:30."

"Excellent! Now if you'll excuse me." Magnus waved a hand and a portal opened up a few feet down the corridor. "I may even have time for a few more hours of sleep." He backed into the portal, saluting them with the martini glass he was still carrying.

Jace stood there a minute and finally said, "This isn't going to go like Alec thinks it is, is it?"

Clary hummed. "It might but it… doesn't seem very likely."

"At least it'll be fun."


	3. Chapter 3

He stood facing himself in the middle of the sparring room.

His swords were dangling at his sides, breaths slowing as sweat started collecting on skin rather than evaporating as he moved through the air. The impact of metal on metal, of body against body, still echoed in his bones. He could feel the stretch in his muscles and in his lungs, but his energy reserves were far from exhausted and there was still a battle cry hovering in the back of his throats—

Like a circuit breaking across the surface of Jace's skin, the bond snapped and he winced at the flash of pain but managed to hold onto himself, if barely. He could still feel Alec, the barrier between them tissue paper thin, but he knew they were two people again. He stretched his neck to either side and started to close his eyes only to reconsider and keep them open — too easy to slip back under that way and drag Alec with him.

"Okay, so, that was fun," Jace said, "but it was 6 hours of dancing and occasionally falling on our faces. And not what I would call challenging."

Alec shrugged with a wry twist to his mouth, bouncing on his toes. "Practice is never wasted." It was an Alec phrase, an old recitation that pre-dated Jace's time at the New York Institute, and standard enough advice. But from Alec it came with a particular sensation, a grim, nose to the grindstone determination, with the sound of blood drops hitting the wooden floor of the archery range in the silence between _thoks_ of arrows. His own lessons has been literal terrors as often as not before Maryse and Robert had taken him in, but Alec had only needed half as much incentive to flog himself mercilessly and Jace hadn't liked that phrase even before he could feel it through the bond. He had a sudden image of Alec growing up under Valentine's hand and just as quickly cut his thoughts off when he felt Alec's confusion over the sudden spike in Jace's heart rate. They were still way too close for letting his mind wander in the adrenaline drop, as little as it was.

Jace shook his head and grinned. "And fun is definitely not wasted, I'm just saying, the lack of challenge is getting old."

Alec, who Jace knew damn well was feeling the same thing, rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry, did you maybe want the lull to break with three greater demons showing up at the same time just so you can get your adrenaline fix?"

"Like you wouldn't be right there with me and just as happy about it at this point."

Alec's comeback was interrupted by both of them becoming aware of Magnus and Clary walking up the steps to the training room. It was the path of least resistance to pivot into each other, turning to watch the two walk up, appearing deep in conversation. Just inside the archway they both froze, Clary stopping mid-word, and they turned and looked at Jace and Alec. Jace couldn't help but smile, if smile was the word for it. He could feel it was a little too wide, too many teeth showing, could feel the same excitement bubbling up through Alec, but getting himself under control was taking effort. Clary looked amazing every day but right now she might as well have been glowing.

"How fortunate, despite someone swearing it wouldn't be necessary, my evening appointments can be rescheduled," Magnus said.

Clary, moving slowly and keeping eye contact — surely he was passing for more normal than that — pulled her phone from her back pocket, unlocked it, and dialed all without looking. "Hey, Izzy," she said, "yeah, can you go ahead take me off duty for the night. Shockingly, something else has come up."

Okay, now he knew she was messing with him, which was completely unfair considering it was really Alec she should be sassing.

Right then Izzy herself walked up behind Clary, still on her phone, and leaned over Clary's shoulder, staring at Jace. Jace pointedly ignored her in favor of staring at Clary. Clary's top was cut just a little bit lower than usual and it was making not just flat out staring at her cleavage in front of everyone _really_ difficult. That would probably be rude. Alec tended to smack him upside the head when he did things like that. On the other hand, Alec was really distracted right now and wouldn't notice. Clary hadn't been wearing shirt that at lunch, right? He would definitely remember if she had been.

Izzy made a frustrated noise and said, "Alec, I win." Then, over top Alec's half-hearted protests, "This is officially the fifth time in five weeks. Seriously, definition of insanity. We can discuss what you owe me tomorrow. In the meantime, please leave."

"Hey," Alec said, "you didn't have any better ideas. And I'm not leaving. I have three phone calls to make, a budget report to finish, and the reconstruction project to check on." He made a passing attempt to sound offended despite his obvious distraction. At least Jace thought it was obvious to everyone else too, which was supported by Magnus, Clary, and Izzy all looking at Alec like he'd lost his mind. Jace, busy admiring the sudden slide of Clary's hair over the line of her neck, didn't bother, trusting Alec could feel Jace laughing at him through the still restless bond.

Apparently, despite the last gasps of Alec's champion level denial, even six hours of a one off sparring session was not enough to keep them from ending up on some kind of wild endorphin high. Again. Fortunately Jace was settling more into his own skin and further away from Alec's with every minute considering the fight adrenaline was fast rolling over into a totally different focus. A sliver of color at the neckline of Clary's shirt led him to consider she might be wearing the pink bra. Which was _fantastic_. He loved the pink bra. Oh, damn, now he was picturing it. Jace gritted his teeth and pictured a mental wall between he and Alec instead, shoving the rest of the untethered bond back down into its box until it was needed again.

It wasn't perfect, but it was as good as they were going to manage at a few minutes out and still standing next to each other.

"Paperwork," Magnus said, and, "Really." Jace could feel Alec's wariness — distant now, thank the angel — rise along with his restless arousal as Magnus moved in Jace's peripheral vision, sauntering towards Alec. Mostly out of each others brains, Jace had given up on propriety and was watching Clary's breasts rise and fall with her breathing so he didn't know exactly what Magnus did, just that Alec didn't move, but even with the barriers mostly up Jace could feel an echo of a sense-obliterating surge of lust. He snapped into motion.

He almost activated his and Alec's iratzes but remembered at the last second they were still technically in public. The runes were hidden by their pants but the cut on Alec's shoulder sealing up would be obvious to anyone watching and the whole thing where he didn't actually need a stele for himself _or_ Alec wasn't common knowledge yet. "Stele," he said and caught Izzy's that she tossed him. He drew an iratze on his side and then on Alec's, healing the dozen small wounds and assorted bruises they'd each sustained over the afternoon. Alec didn't glance down as Jace drew the rune, just flinched at the screech of feedback, apparently because he was trying to both out stubborn Magnus and eye fuck him at the same time.

"Right, that's sorted," Jace said, crossing the floor and handing Izzy her stele and the sword he'd been using before taking Clary by the hand and pulling her towards the living quarters. "Or will be, thank you, Izzy. Going now, see you all tomorrow." Behind him, he heard a portal whoosh into existence and felt Alec shift through space, the extra distance finally blunting the parabatai bond down to its resting state.


	4. Chapter 4

Stumbling out of the portal right inside his own front door, Magnus dropped the shirt and stele he'd grabbed off the bench in the training room, then turned and shoved Alec against the warded oak. He bent his knees and let his tongue travel up the path his finger had taken a few moments before when he'd run it down the center of Alec's bare chest. He'd been tempted to use his tongue in the training room too, because sweaty and glowing with exertion was an _excellent_ look on Alec (and Magnus should know), but had managed to restrain himself given the fact they'd been in the middle of the Institute and in full view of anyone who cared to look. Which was definitely a thought, but Magnus had only been trying to stoke Alec's arousal, not cause him to self-immolate on the spot.

Alec tasted overwhelmingly of salt and musk and Magnus was heading for Alec's neck, intending to nibble on it for a while, but detoured to a tempting nipple instead. Alec groaned, head thunking back against the door, tip of the seraph sword he was still holding dropping the last couple of inches to the floor and sparking along the stone currently decorating the entryway. His free hand came up to the back of Magnus' neck and slid down over his collar, tangling with necklace clasps. Against his thighs, Magnus could feel Alec's knees start to tremble and bend slightly, prelude to buckling. He left off Alec's nipple and patted his truly delightful chest a little regretfully, then smirked and straightened up. "It seems I have a few phone calls to make and appointments to cancel so I trust you can occupy yourself for a few moments. I would recommend you see about some food and water while you wait."

"Magnus!" Alec said in a tone that didn't know whether it was growling or whining.

"Oh no," Magnus said, walking backward towards the living room. _"You_ were going back to work. You can last 15 minutes while I insure we will not be interrupted for the rest of the day."

Alec scoffed even as he leveraged against the door to push himself back up. "Can't we just— It's not like we're going in for a sex marathon here." He was definitely whining now.

Magnus kept walking but called back, "If the last four incidents are any indication, darling, that's exactly what we're going in for." He remembered to add a few moments later, "Not that I'm complaining!"

He had, of course, already rescheduled or canceled his evening appointments as necessary after the morning meeting at the Institute, and distributed the information that, with luck, the lull should be ending soon and there would be less Shadowhunters on the streets in the meantime. No one was expecting him at Pandemonium tonight and the wards were set to deter anyone save the most desperate, so all the groundwork was in place. But while Alec hadn't needed to activate his stamina rune for weeks for any reason, Magnus needed time for his own little cheat to kick in.

Opening one of the glamoured compartments in the bookcase, he took out the vial and downed the contents quickly, wincing at the taste. The concoction was a combined increased stamina and energy booster with a few bonus side effects. It was an effort to brew, a bit hard to source the ingredients for, and there were a few esoteric supplies purveyors that definitely thought he was wrapped up in fertility rites of some kind, but after the first "incident", it had seemed like a good idea. At least for a short while. It only had a shelf life of just over a week but considering he'd so far made it four times and none of them had had a chance to go off before being used, it had _definitely_ been a good idea to keep it on hand. He was flirting with the line of too often, especially considering everything that kept coming up in between _(besides_ Alec, but that too), but so far so good. He was banking on the lull giving out before he did.

Alec could, of course, survive without Magnus participating in his orgasms, but Magnus would never forgive himself for missing out on this incredible turn of events.

He took the time to remove his shoes, rearranged a few bottles, then killed about 10 more minutes redecorating the living room before wandering back to the kitchen to see how Alec had been occupying himself. Magnus found him sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out, eating the pizza Magnus had left him on the counter, and drinking a glass of water. The only light was the late afternoon sun coming in from the living room, casting most of the floor in shadow, but a stray beam had found its way to Alec and was picking out the shine of his still damp hair and the gleam of sweat lingering on his skin. Alec pouted up at him through sooty black lashes that were probably a crime somewhere as he engaged in the most sullen pizza eating Magnus had ever witnessed. Magnus leaned back against the counter and smirked down at him, blatantly leering at Alec's everything.

Alec kept eating on autopilot but his expression shifted from disgruntled to predatory interest as his eyes drifted south of Magnus' face. Magnus flicked open the topmost button of his shirt and Alec's gaze jumped back up as he started to put the slice of pizza down. Magnus fastened the button back up. The look of outrage on Alec's face was _priceless._

"Magnus!"

"Oh no, you haven't eaten since lunch at the latest and we've already learned that lesson the hard way in the last few weeks. You have," Magnus peered around the box lid, "two slices left plus the one you just started. Each one gets you a piece of clothing removed." He subtly rounded off the edges of the countertop he was leaning against so they weren't digging in quite so much. He had a feeling that was going to be a pertinent detail in the very near future.

Alec looked like he was about to argue about the accusation, or maybe the terms Magnus had laid out, but he couldn't do that and eat at the same time, and eating had a more immediate reward system. To hedge his bets, Magnus toyed with the button without actually slipping it free. Alec narrowed his eyes at him but picked the pizza back up and took a bite. Magnus eased the top button back out of its hole.

Alec made it through the rest of the slice at a steady pace, Magnus flicking open a button for every bite and spending the time in between running a teasing finger up and down his own abs, letting it skip over and sometimes twist in the necklaces he was wearing. Which was all starting to tease more than just Alec considering the stamina potion had well and truly kicked in and there was a breathless anticipation climbing its way up his spine. By the time Alec had finished the slice it was a profound relief to slip the fabric free from under the chains and off his shoulders. Even the slither of it down his arms sparked pleasantly along his nerves, the bliss of air against his exposed skin a momentary respite.

Part way into the second slice, Alec finished off his glass and held it up towards Magnus. "Refill?" he asked, his voice notably huskier than usual. Magnus refilled it with the wave of one hand while undoing the top button of his pants with the other. Alec kept eating but forgot half of what he was doing and just held the glass aloft for nearly a full minute, staring at Magnus' pants like he could strip them off just by wishing for it really hard. Or maybe he was just thinking of other things he really wanted to be doing with his mouth. Magnus started to summon himself a drink, remembered he probably shouldn't mix the potion with alcohol, and summoned a tumbler with water in it instead.

Magnus managed to drink some of his water — and lower his zipper, also a relief — as Alec finished the second slice of pizza, but then his resolve crumbled. "Darling, these pants were tight when I put them on and they're _really_ not getting any looser. You may have to help peel me out of them."

Alec didn't even waste time pointing out that line was utterly ridiculous when Magnus could just as easily whisk them away with magic if it were really necessary. He just nodded, took a last drink of water, and said, "Oh, definitely," while rolling up onto his hands and knees, shoving the pizza box off to the side and out of his way so he could crawl the few steps across the floor.

Magnus may have forgotten to breathe for a moment or two.

Alec reached him and ran his hands from Magnus' ankles up to his calves and all the way up his thighs, hands firm against the slippery, unforgiving fabric, the pressure alone fueling a delicious ache. Magnus expected Alec to go right into pants removal but instead he kept going, sliding up to standing with full body contact along the way, thumbs deliberately rolling the necklace chains against Magnus' bare skin and making him shiver. "Hey," Alec said, his sweet grin at odds with most everything else about the situation.

"Hey yourself," Magnus said, already a little breathless, reaching up and thumbing away the small smear of pizza sauce at the corner of Alec's mouth. "My pants are still on," he added, thoroughly sucking the practically non-existent bit of sauce off his thumb.

He could actually see Alec's brain stop processing words. Alec leaned in and kissed him, slow and gentle but with hands sliding the rest of the way up to cradle Magnus' head the way they did when he was particularly overwhelmed one way or another. He tasted of sweet tomato and oregano, a faint bite of heat, and Magnus lost some time to the hazy eroticism that was Alec on a kissing jag. He surfaced over a sudden lack of kisses to find Alec hadn't gone far, had just trailed his mouth down to Magnus' neck.

Magnus gasped at the nip to his collarbone and gripped the counter behind him, rings clicking against the hard surface. Pulling on Alec's hair was always a temptation in this kind of position but the last thing Magnus wanted to do was slow his descent. _"Pants,"_  he reminded Alec because they really needed to go and Magnus was very close to just using magic after all.

"Working on it," Alec mumbled, punctuating the statement with another small nip, this one halfway down Magnus' chest, his teeth picking up and tugging playfully at the longest chain even as he lowered himself to his knees. Alec hooked his hands into Magnus' waistband finally and did indeed start peeling them down, along with the very snug underwear that hadn't been helping anything. Regardless of the aesthetic value, it was probably the easiest non-magical way to remove them. Alec stopped pulling as soon as Magnus' erection was freed, leaving his legs very much trapped together, and leaned in to lick a solid line up Magnus' cock.

Magnus found himself winding a hand through Alec's hair after all and tugging gently. It was fortunate Alec enjoyed having it pulled as much as Magnus enjoyed doing the pulling. Alec looked up, eyes hot and hazy, and grinned. "Honestly, Alexander," Magnus said, tugging a bit more as Alec hummed in pleasure, "I thought I was supposed to be the tease in this relationship."

"You do kn—," Alec started, voice raspy, and broke off with a small laugh. He leaned his forehead against Magnus' hip and cleared his throat before looking back up. "You do know that sounds like a challenge, right?" He licked his lips, eyes drifting back down to Magnus' cock. "But maybe later."

Alec leaned in, one hand going to the base of Magnus' cock, and took him in his mouth for two long, hard sucks before pulling back off. Magnus was still groaning while Alec peeled his pants the rest of the way down. He wrestled them over Magnus' feet one at a time, then stood up, sliding his own pants and underwear off along the way so that it was finally full skin contact when he crowded up against Magnus again.

"Lube?" Alec asked, breathing having sped up noticeably, hips rolling against Magnus' own.

Magnus summoned it, held it up for Alec, and then stopped when he realized he was holding a small bottle of oil. He squinted at it, trying to concentrate for two seconds around his own heavy breathing and so much increasingly sweaty skin sliding together. He finally determined it was indeed sexual lubricant, just not the type he'd used in recent decades. Whoops. But good enough. He pulled the cork out with his teeth, planted a hand on Alec's chest to hold him back for a moment, and poured some over both their erections. Miraculously, he was able to toss the cork somewhere out of the way and had just gotten the bottle back on the counter upright as Alec grabbed for Magnus' other hand and wrapped it around their cocks. It didn't escape Magnus' notice Alec had gone for the hand with the most rings; he made sure to angle his grip so it was Alec's cock the backs of them were sliding up and down.

"Oil on the floor," Magnus said, free hand yanking Alec in for a brief, messy kiss.

"Noted," Alec said and planted his hands on the counter to either side of Magnus for better leverage, then promptly let out a yip when one foot slid a few inches.

Magnus giggled and sped up his strokes.

"I—" Alec started, broke off on a whine and tried again, "I am not going to las— _fuck_. This is going to be really fast."

"You can make it up to me later," Magnus panted, not pointing out his own orgasm wasn't going to be far behind.

Alec dropped his head down next to Magnus'. "Almost—"

Magnus reached down with his other hand, sliding it into the slight space between them and over Alec's oil slick testicles to the tender skin behind, pushing firmly with his fingers in tight little strokes. It was awkward and a little tricky to coordinate both hands and accommodate the movement of Alec's helpless hip thrusts even as his own orgasm was rolling up on him but Magnus _was_ exceptionally talented and the payoff was immediate. Alec pressed up even closer against him and thrust up hard a couple of times before spending himself between them.

Alec's hips kept moving for a moment but finally slowed and stopped as he angled in to kiss Magnus around trying to catch his breath. "Hey," Alec said gently after a moment, "hey, I got you." Which was when Magnus realized he was trembling, hand still wrapped around his own hard cock, orgasm hovering at the edges. Alec eased Magnus' hand free and replaced it with one of his own, using it for long, firm strokes even as he started kissing him again. Magnus whimpered into the kiss, each stroke pulling up from deep satisfaction to preliminary fireworks and back again, the cycle a delicious torment until it flipped into a downhill slide straight into bliss.

It took a few minutes for Magnus' heart rate to settle and he spent the time sliding his mouth over Alec's, biting at his bottom lip, and rasping against his five o'clock shadow. Alec finally pulled back enough to lean his forehead against Magnus', hands settled on Magnus' hips and spreading the mess everywhere. The need was still there, the potion tapping at the base of his spine, this momentary satisfaction a mere respite, and he could feel the same eye of the storm in the restless shift of Alec's hands along his hips, the tempo of his breathing.

Alec leaned back and started to say something, but before he could, he yelped and fell forward, grabbing for the counter with one hand and wrapping the other arm around Magnus. "By the fucking angel," he said, sounding exasperated. "It's a miracle we didn't end up on the floor with head injuries."

Magnus started laughing. "Here let me—Wait, no, I need to stop laughing, hold on." He leaned his forehead against Alec's shoulder and managed to get the hilarity under control but didn't dare look back up at Alec lest it start up again. He wound up the magic in a twist of his fingers and released it with the flick of a wrist, banishing the mess on both of them and the oil on the floor all at the same time. "Okay, it's safe again."

"Yay," Alec said, hand coming up to tip Magnus' head at an angle so he could kiss him again. "So I was thinking a long, hot shower."

"Hmmmm, feeling a need to get clean?"

"Not really."

"Oh, excellent, the not-so-clean showers are my favorite kind."

Six hours and no less than seven orgasms each later, Magnus was torturing Alec with a slow, thorough fucking. Underneath him, Alec was on his knees with his face mashed between a couple of pillows, whining in between gasps for air and fast losing patience from the sound of it.

Magnus stilled his hips and bent down, resting his forehead against Alec's spine. "Yes, sweetheart? Was there something?" He was trying to sound smug but the effort to catch his own breath was interfering. Instead he rubbed the short hairs of his goatee over the sweaty, tender skin between Alec's shoulder blades, smirking at the resulting shiver. He could feel Alec's thighs trembling, likely from a combination of desperate lust and incipient exhaustion similar to what Magnus was experiencing. Magnus eyed the line of bruises he'd sucked along Alec's neck across the deflect rune, his mouth almost watering at the thought of making a few more, at the thought of the noises Alec would make when he did, but he really didn't have the reach at the moment. He settled for a few sparks of magic on the darkest of them and was rewarded by Alec whining, muscles briefly tightening down on Magnus' cock.

Alec's hand came up over his shoulder, trying to grab at whatever part of Magnus he could reach, but that turned out to be not enough for a decent grip and he huffed in frustration. Turning his head so Magnus could see the side of his face, Alec grated out, "Damnit, _fuck me._ Hard. _Now."_

An invigorating shot of heat poured down Magnus' spine to his pelvis and he nipped at the sharp jut of one scapula before rising back up, pulling Alec's hips with him. "Get your hands underneath you, Alexander, and brace yourself," he said, reaching down and running a deliberate thumb around Alec's rim where he was stretched open. Alec rushed to comply, hands skidding for a moment on the damp, slippery sheets, even as his body clamped down around Magnus' cock again, not so briefly this time. Magnus hissed before drawing himself out and thrusting back in.

Hard, as requested.  

They both groaned and, as soon as Magnus collected himself, he set one hand on Alec's hip to help keep his balance while complying with Alec's delightfully direct request. His other hand he slid up Alec's spine and over his neck to thread through his hair, then Magnus tightened his grip and _pulled_. Alec's back bowed even as he cried out, arms spreading wider and hands fanning out. Magnus was out of hands for Alec's neglected cock, but magic was a versatile instrument. Or maybe Alec was the instrument? He decided he'd think about it later when he wasn't quite so busy.

Alec groaned again, the sound like it was being pulled up from deep in his chest, as filmy blue tendrils began sifting around his hands and wrapping around his arms. It snaked around his neck, lingering for a moment on the rune and bruising there, then over his shoulders, down around his rib cage, and between his legs to wrap firmly around his cock. A few minutes of stroking Alec with a strong grip and conveniently no-lube-needed slip-slide friction and he could feel Alec's rhythms starting to falter. Magnus kept fucking him, his own orgasm hovering close with each new roll of his hips, the intense pleasure of the friction and pressure around his cock rising up around the curve of his ass and down the muscles of his thighs.

Earlier in the evening Alec had been more likely to swear when yet another orgasm started to roll over him, but by now he was reduced to thready moans that sounded more than half desperate. This one Magnus could feel coming on as surely as he could hear it, Alec's whole body tightening down, at the point of desperately chasing release and Magnus himself had to work to stave off his own for a few moments more as Alec cried out.

He finally felt Alec sag, body going loose with relief, and Magnus released his magic and drew the hand that had been in Alec's hair back down his spine to his other hip. Finally free of managing someone else's experience, he managed to thrust slowly just a few times — a last savoring of the drag, the feel of Alec's ass nestling into the cradle of his hips when he sank all the way in — before the imminence of his own orgasm cracked his control wide open and he finished with an erratic dozen or so more. He tipped over his own edge with considerably less finesse than he'd so far managed and ended up bent over Alec's back again, whimpering over the pleasure verging on pain.

It was a matter of seconds before they both proceeded to do a slow motion collapse straight down onto the bed that could charitably be described as 'completely destroyed'. A few minutes later, brain slowly coming back online, Magnus slid free, making them both shudder, and fell sideways onto the bed covers, the ones still actually on the bed at any rate. He finally managed, "This is a good way to die."

Alec huffed out a breathless laugh and said in a strained voice, "We are definitely going to need another shower. Once I can move."

Magnus was feeling dazed enough by this point that he took several long seconds to actually think about what he was doing when a flick of the wrist took care of the worst of the mess. It worked but the remaining upright lamp on Alec's side tipped over and fell to the floor. Whoops. At least there hadn't been any breaking sounds. They really were going to need another shower regardless, though. Maybe a little less energetic than the first one. Then maybe ordering in a five course meal followed by so much sleep.

Even Alec might get more than 3 hours rest tonight once they'd fixed the bed situation. Which reminded him. "Alexander, if you wake me before noon tomorrow, I will hex you."

"Understood."


	5. Chapter 5

Jace was curled up on his side, face buried between Clary's breasts. He couldn't breathe very well, his wrists still had unhealed rope burns, and one arm was going numb from Clary laying on it, but he really, sincerely, did not care. He had the hazy thought that they should maybe move, for food and water if nothing else. "Hey, Clary," he mumbled.

"Hmmmm?" she asked, chest vibrating slightly with the hum as she started running her nails through his hair and scratching at his scalp. Oh, that felt good. Moving suddenly seemed highly overrated.

"Nevermind"

"Kay," she said, then promptly lifted up and rolled him over on his back. The noise he made might possibly have been a whine. "Shush," she said, "your wrists still need healing."

"I was comf—" his complaint ended abruptly when she straddled his waist and leaned down. "This is good too. If you could move up just a little it would be even better." 

She smirked, then reached back and tapped at his iratze. "Are you going to do it or do you want me to get up and get a stele?"

He rolled his eyes and activated the rune, the sting at his wrists fading along with a few other aches he noticed mostly by their absence. 

"Good boy," she said, leaning down to kiss him briefly, a curtain of hair sliding down with her. "You know, we could use smoother rope." 

He wasn't quite sure what his face did, too busy trying to decide if that was good or bad, but it made her smile. "Or we could just use what we have." Jace realized he'd tensed up at some point and consciously relaxed back. He ran his hands up into her hair and tugged her down so he could kiss her some more, the rub of her nipples against his chest always worth savoring even if there was no chance he was up to doing anything about it.

Eventually though, she pulled away and sat up. "Okay, we really need to take a shower. There's still a spare set of sheets in here, right? I hope so because the alternative is pretty much sleeping on the floor."

Jace snorted. "Yeah, I think so." He stretched lengthwise, pushing his feet down and hands up, wincing at the tacky pull of… everything. "A shower doesn't sound like a terrible idea," he allowed.

She grinned and climbed off of him, tugging at his hand to drag him after her into the bathroom.

They managed to shower without getting too distracted, which had everything to do with tiredness setting in and nothing to do with efficiency. Afterward, Clary started brushing out a couple feet of wet, tangled hair and Jace went to find them food. They had actually eaten earlier (Clary had been  _ prepared) _ but everyone in the Institute was burning through food faster than usual lately so it wouldn't have been surprising that they were ravenous again even if they'd spent the whole evening sitting around and doing nothing. As it was, Jace was debating if he could carry enough or if he should steal one of the dollies from the dining hall.

By the time he got back with two precariously stacked trays and a couple carafes, Clary had started wrestling with the sheets. Together they managed to get them changed, find all the pillows with only one small pillow fight, and shove all the dirty sheets into the far corner to be dealt with later.

Jace spread the trays out on the floor and they sat cross-legged, working their way steadily through grapes and cheese and ham sandwiches. Clary ate some of everything, said, "Wow, I am so full," and immediately reached for the container of ice cream he'd stuck two spoons in. Jace abandoned his latest sandwich and started helping Clary with the ice cream as otherwise there was a very real chance she'd finish off the whole thing before he got a bite. He'd spent enough years living with Alec and Izzy, he knew how this worked.

Once they'd gone through almost all the ice cream, Clary collapsed back on the floor with a groan. "Okay, I'm really full this time." 

Jace laughed, sandwich in one hand and spoon in the other as he started alternating bites between ice cream and not ice cream.

Clary sat back up. "So sparring didn't work. Even six hours of it."

"Not like Alec swore it would, no."

She started lining up the last few grapes along the edge of one tray. "It seems weird there isn't more written down about parabatai bonds. I mean, I know there aren't a lot of them, but it's not like they're super rare either."

Jace finished the last bite of his sandwich and stirred his spoon around in the little bit of softened ice cream that remained. "It's not weird," he finally said.

Clary looked up, eyebrows raised.

"It's not something we talk about much. Not with other people. I mean, everyone knows the basics, but it's hard to explain the rest of it in a way other people can understand. The obvious stuff, yeah, the big stuff, but what it feels like… that's different." He dropped the spoon on the tray and started piling things up in a stack that would be easier to carry.

"I've been there both times one of you died," Clary said. "I think I have a better idea than most people."

"Yeah, you do," Jace said, standing up and taking the tray with him. He sat it down next to the door for later and stopped for a minute before taking a deep breath and turning around. He went to the bed and settled himself against the headboard, then waited until Clary came up to join him, curling up against his side with her head on his shoulder. "There's a big difference between me telling you and us writing it down for anyone to read. For it to be studied." He didn't mention how the Clave would read between the lines and hold he and Alec accountable as they saw fit, good or bad. Ever since they'd taken the runes, the parabatai bond had been his and Alec's biggest strength as well as their biggest weakness. Neither of them wanted to give away that kind of ammunition.

"Okay then," she said, "what's it like being a parabatai?"

"Like Lucy said this morning, it's always different. That's a given, but for Alec and I, for me, when the bond first formed there was this profound relief, like I'd found a important piece of myself I didn't know hadn't been there. And then it got really overwhelming really fast." Fuck, had it ever. For a while they'd loved and hated each other in equal measure. 

"Standard operating procedure pulled us off field duty for awhile to learn how to work with it and at any given time in the first five or six months, it was either a power trip or terrifying. Sparring was great but then I'd be getting all kinds of stuff bleeding over from Alec and it could be hard to tell what was his and what was mine. And I had no idea what was going the other direction, how much of my shit was ending up in his head."

"I thought it was just general emotions."

"It was, it is mostly, and you need context for any of it to make sense, but we were training as parabatai. We were in each other's hip pockets most of the time and we had the same context so it wasn't hard to guess things. We drove ourselves into the ground trying to get a handle on it." 

Those months had been hell. Hours and hours of joint training would spike everything up and they'd roll straight into more hours of individual training as their 'down time', inevitably still ending up in the same space, trying to exhaust themselves enough they couldn't think straight. Jace had already discovered the joys of alcohol by then and sex was an old friend but, despite plenty of temptation, he'd been sober and celibate for a solid six months because there was no way it would have ended as anything other than a disaster. 

"It was Alec that figured out how to keep the wall up between us, and how to box most of it away," he said, pulling his arm out from between them and wrapping it around her shoulders. "In the last year it's been… changing. I can feel that it's stronger. It goes deeper, like the roots of it have spread out. At this point, when we're sparring, as soon as we open it up, I'm not Jace and he's not Alec, we're just one set of thoughts operating two bodies. Which has the potential to be amazing, if it didn't keep breaking."

Clary sat up and twisted around to look at him.  _ "Breaking?" _

"It just snaps out for a minute. I mean, we're still bonded, don't get me wrong, but it's just like a regular day not like it should be in the middle of a damn fight." He grimaced. "It's disorienting as fuck. I either freeze or trip every damn time."

Clary settled back under his arm and said, "You haven't told Izzy that anything's wrong, have you?"

Jace sighed. "To be fair, I don't think Izzy can help. She has less of a clue about this stuff than we do and I've checked the records that do exist; there's nothing like it mentioned. But it doesn't matter since I can't fix anything by myself and Alec keeps insisting it'll go away on its own. He's being stubborn. "

"Alec?!" Clary gasped theatrically.  _ "Stubborn?" _

Jace laughed. "For the record, he's a lot less stubborn than he used to be."

"Oh, I remember when Alec was more stubborn, thank you very much. Or maybe I should say thank you Magnus Bane." 

Jace couldn't see her face but he could hear her smile. "Yeah, Magnus had a lot to do with it, and I absolutely gave him so much shit about finally getting laid, but Alec… It's like an undercover op. Alec's really fucking terrible at undercover work. He seems like one of the most straight forward people you know because he can't lie to other people for anything when it's something random. But he's really good at lying to himself when it's something important. The things he doesn't want to deal with or the things he thinks he has to hide get shoved back behind those walls he got so good at putting up and either way it keeps right on going until stuff's under so much pressure it all explodes. A lot of things exploded when Magnus showed up."

Clary hummed thoughtfully. "In spectacular fashion. But I don't think you want to wait for this to explode, which might be any day now when the lull ends. Even if it gets better, like it was before the lull, it's been going for how long now?"

Jace shrugged. "I don't know. It came on slow, but eight months, give or take? It's like as the bond got tighter things started squeaking together. And when we power it up, things are wrapped up so tight they can't take the tension."

Clary sat up from under his arm again and kept going, rolling up to settle a knee on either side of his thighs. She tilted her head and studied him for a moment, then tapped him on the chest with one finger and said, "Go see Magnus."

"What? Why? Do you think Alec told him?" He could admit to himself he felt a slight pang at that, but he didn't feel the need to admit it out loud.

"No," she said, "not really, but Alec only confides in three people: Izzy, you, and Magnus. He and Izzy have been hardcore butting heads recently and I'm pretty sure she doesn't know. He keeps telling you it'll be fine, and that only leaves Magnus. Even if Alec hasn't told him, Magnus might know something. Or Alec might talk about it if Magnus is the one who asks him."

"Yeah, okay, solid plan." Jace dropped his head back, thunking it against the headboard. "Ugh, my life would be so much easier if Alec were just half as hard headed."

Clary laughed and patted him on the chest. "Poor baby."


	6. Chapter 6

The next day, after a full five hours of sleep, Jace waited until Alec finally appeared in the early afternoon and holed up in his office before he abandoned the troops to Clary's chipperly sadistic tendencies and went to Brooklyn. Alec would notice Jace wasn't in the Institute if he paid attention but he was distracted for the time being and Jace just needed him not here right now. The front door of the loft itself was standing open so Magnus must have sensed he was coming even if there was no sign of Magnus himself. He walked into the living room and headed for the bookcases, running his hand over the spines and pulling out one he didn't remember being there. It was in Greek, which he hadn't needed to use for a few years and was a bit rusty on, but he was able to pick his way through easily enough.

He'd gotten lost in the text but it had to have been a while considering how many pages in he was before Magnus finally spoke from the archway. "I have to admit, when you were camped out in my spare room, I was a bit surprised to discover how much of a polyglot you are. I didn't think Shadowhunter educations were so far reaching."

Jace froze for a split second, subsuming the instinct to jump, then closed the book and slid it back into its spot on the bookcase. "I didn't have a standard Shadowhunter education, not until later. My fa—" he stopped, started again. "I grew up speaking quite a few languages. Valentine insisted it opened one's mind to a broader understanding of the world." He turned around. "In hindsight, what he really wanted was someone who understood all the obscure references he was throwing around and could properly appreciate his genius."

Magnus had seated himself in a chair and was fiddling with one of his rings, studying Jace with the grim expression he got whenever Valentine was mentioned. It was a low glitter day again today, but he looked slightly less exhausted than he had yesterday morning. "He did like to brag," Magnus said finally, "and, on that note, I need something alcoholic now. Drink?" He stood and headed for the bottles currently lined up on a dedicated shelf in the bookcase.

"It's two in the afternoon."

Magnus spun around, glass already in hand, and lifted an eyebrow. "So that's a…?"

Jace sighed. "Yeah, pour." 

Magnus selected a bottle and poured a couple shots worth in a glass and handed it to Jace. "So what brings the wrong parabatai here this afternoon? Not business, I gather, and therefore explicitly when the right one is otherwise occupied."

The drink proved to be mezcal, smooth and just a little smokey, and the first sip went down with a mild burn. "Yeah, about Alec. Has he talked at all about the parabatai bond lately?" 

Magnus had already poured his own glass but took his time settling the stopper back on the decanter and turning back around. "He has mentioned that recently the two of you have been experiencing a certain… synchronization… when sparring, as well as some kind of energy feedback."

Jace rubbed at his face. "That's a good way to put it, but I'm guessing he hasn't said anything about the rest of it." He turned, walked towards the terrace doors, suddenly needing the cooler outside air before he could try to explain anything. 

"You're going to have to give me more to go on than that," Magnus said from behind him.

You never knew what you were going to find on Magnus' balcony — in the whole loft, for that matter — but at the moment the seating options included two chairs and a low table off to one side. Jace sat down in one of the chairs and said, "It keeps breaking."

Magnus, halfway seated in the other chair, froze and looked up, eyes wide, apparently reading more into that statement than Jace had intended.

"No, sorry, not like an emergency or anything.  _ Has _ he said anything about it breaking sometimes?"

_ "Breaking," _ Magnus said, sitting the rest of the way down. "No, he hasn't said anything about that particular issue. What do you mean by 'breaking'?"

Jace leaned forward. "Yeah, he's convinced himself it's no big deal and it will magically go away when the lull does." He leaned back in the chair again, foot tapping. "If we're synced up in a fight then it randomly breaks for a few seconds and then snaps back. It happened a dozen times when we were sparring yesterday and there's no way to predict it, so we just end up totally confused for a few seconds. Which—" he stopped and sipped at his drink. 

"Which is enough distraction to be fatal," Magnus finished, frowning. 

"And it sucks when you fall 20 feet to the floor of the training room and land badly because it broke right when you went to drop down."

Magnus winced. "Yes, that would smart. So why are you coming to me? Shouldn't you be talking to Alec about this?"

Jace shrugged, stood up to walk over to lean on the stone wall looking out into the city. "Like I said, he's convinced it will go away, and a month ago I didn't disagree with him. Not that much anyway. It wasn't as bad and the whole breaking thing had only happened a few times. There was just that annoying feedback. Now it's fucked up, I can't figure out why, and Alec's being more stubborn than usual. To be honest, there's very few people I'd trust with this information, and even less that might be of any help."

"Shadowhunter bonds aren't exactly my specialty," Magnus said dryly, walking up and leaning on the wall next to Jace. "I don't know how you think I can be of assistance." 

"At this point, I'd be happy if he'd at least admit it's a  _ really obvious  _ problem," Jace said and he could feel the frustration rising. He turned and walked down the length of the balcony, trailing his hand down the stone, and paced back, hoping the movement would help keep his head clear. He was halfway through a third circuit when a scattering of blue magic suddenly rushed under his feet and the terrace expanded out dramatically. He turned and looked back at Magnus.

"You looked like you could use more room," Magnus said. "Back to your point, even if I agreed, ganging up on him isn't likely to yield positive results."

"I know that! I know. That's… yeah, he'd dig his heels in more. But he won't talk to me about it and he's more honest with you than anyone else so I was hoping he'd— I don't know. It's not something I can fix it by myself and my other half is being a stubborn jackass. More than usual."

"Alexander hardly tells me everything. Case in point." He gestured towards Jace with his glass. "No more than I tell him everything."

Jace scrubbed at his hair. "That wasn't what I meant. Look, the parabatai bond's stronger than it's ever been but Alec's always been smoke and mirrors inside his own head. He's gotten really good at hiding stuff from me. We both have, to tell the truth, we've both had our own reasons to, but whatever this is, whatever is making him this fucking stubborn about it, he's not willing to talk to me about it so maybe he'll talk to you." 

Jace took a larger swallow of the mezcal. Magnus was still leaning against the wall, watching.

Magnus finally took a deep breath and straightened up. "Well." There was long silence and Jace worked on taking slow, deep breaths. He'd plowed through some paperwork in the morning since his head had been halfway clear after yesterday, but then he'd come here instead of running drills with everyone, and right now he was ready to climb out of his own skin. 

"I will talk to him about it," Magnus said suddenly, "on one condition."

Jace hesitated. Conditions were not, in his experience, good things, but this was Magnus, so he said, "Okay. What is it?"

_ "Shadowhunters," _ Magnus said, rolling his eyes. "You're supposed to ask what the condition is  _ before _ you agree to it."

"It wasn't a contract!" Jace protested. "This is a conversation!"

"You have dealings with the Seelie queen! This should be a reflex!"

"You are not the Seelie queen!"

"For which I am very grateful. Nonetheless,  _ ask first," _ Magnus said. "Honestly, sometimes I despair of how the nephilim have survived." Jace started to protest that they survived just fine, damn it, but Magnus held up a finger. "The condition is that I will not hide from him that you came to me and asked me to talk to him."

Jace squinted at him. "That's not a bad condition."

"Oh, now you're suspicious?"

"No, but I don't get why you were being so mysterious about it."

"I was not be—" Magnus took a long drink of his mezcal. "You know what, never mind. Alec and I's schedules being what they are, it might be a couple of days until we can have a proper conversation but I will see if he's willing to share his perspective on the problem."

_ "Thank _ you." Jace drained the last of his glass and then looked down at it. "This lull thing is such bullshit. I just had like 2 shots and it's not going to do anything for me. I'm still so keyed up I'm going to have to run back to the Institute just to try and burn some of it off."

Magnus walked by and plucked the glass out of Jace's hand. "I'd offer you more to drink, but I don't think it would help."

"No, it wouldn't," Jace said from bitter experience.


	7. Chapter 7

A couple nights later, Jace arrived at the armory a little after 10 in the evening just as Alec was walking up from the opposite direction. "Hey," Alec said, still tugging on fingerless gloves. "Good timing. You ready?"

Jace nodded. "Yeah. I was going to stop and talk to Izzy but she was in the middle of a demo in the training room."

"Was anybody still standing?"

"Besides Izzy? Not very well."

In the armory, they pulled out weapons for each of them. "You know," Alec said, looking at the far locker thoughtfully, "we could pull out a couple of packs. They'd just be storage supplies so they wouldn't be full weight, but I don't think I've done one of those runs since the last time I was on a training trip to Idris."

"Which has been forever. Consider yourself drafted for the next one," Jace said, strapping on a shoulder holster. "Storage weight's not enough to make a difference, just an annoyance. Let's just do weapons this time and next time we can prep packs if we want."

Alec shrugged agreement and belted on a thigh holster for a seraph dagger, the small knife and holster for his ankle laid out on the table to go on next along with his bow and quiver. Jace had the sword at his back, a dagger at his thigh, and a small throwing knife at each ankle. Neither weapons set weighed much, which was usually an advantage, but running with boots on and wearing weapons and holsters changed the way you carried yourself, so gearing up still had its uses.

"You figure out what route we're taking?" Jace asked, grabbing Alec's arm and activating the unseen rune on his forearm with a stele.

"Yeah, we should be pretty close to the loft in an hour and we can decide then if we want to go another hour. Magnus said he could portal you back if you didn't want to crash there but he might still be at the club."

Jace activated his own unseen. "You know, I could just run straight back here. It's not that far." He tucked his stele away in a pocket. "Hey, I could actually activate my stamina rune for the first time in over a month."

"Fuck no," Alec said, actually laughing, "do _not_ do that."

"That would be pretty counterproductive," Jace said, grinning, and together they headed out of the Institute and into the city night.

Three quarters of an hour later, Jace had just dodged an oblivious mundane and swerved back to Alec when something tripped his subconscious. Jace stopped dead, Alec a step ahead of him, and they both stared as a tall, thin figure still well ahead of them passed under a street lamp right as it bumped into a mundane, flickered, and shifted into a slightly different shape. It didn't look right even from as far back as they were, but the clothes at least were clearly copies of who it'd just bumped into.

Jace looked at Alec and said quietly, "You saw that too, right? We haven't finally lost it?"

"No, I saw it," Alec said as they both started moving again, keeping up with the demon. He was scanning the few mundanes they could see scattered ahead of it. "Do you see anyone in particular it could be stalking?"

"No, not from here. What the fuck, is it just bad at shape shifting? Is it sick? Do demons get sick?"

Alec didn't answer but Jace would have bet his stele Alec was rolling his eyes.

They had kept pace with the demon and worked their way a few feet closer in the process, not wanting to get too close until they could get it alone, when one of the mundanes turned into an alley and the demon angled to follow. Out of the corner of his eye, Jace could see Alec drawing his bow down off his shoulder and an arrow from his quiver.

Speeding up his steps, Jace drew his sword and started activating their speed, deflect, equilibrium, and strength runes as well as his own sure-footed. The gold flare from Alec's neck shone briefly in the darkness even as they both hissed over the flare of pain, letting it roll over them rather than chance the moment's vision lost to a flinch. The darker inside of the alley looming, Jace activated his vision rune, concentrating a moment more so that a matching one appeared on Alec's forearm and gritting his teeth through the second backlash.

At the edge of the alley, Jace glanced over. Alec was still facing forward and focused on tracking the demon, but he nodded. The bond had been trying to push its way in almost since the moment they'd gone on the hunt. Now they both let the box spill open and there was a moment of blinding gold washing through his brain, of feeling it rise up and seize a greedy hold on him as if it were starving.

Then he stopped being _Jace_ and started being _parabatai._

He entered the alley leading with his close range weapon, bow covering from behind. He yelled out, "Hey!" and the demon, already a good ways down the alley, turned. Ahead of it, the intended victim finally sensed they were in danger at some level, picked up their steps, and all but ran. He disregarded the rapidly disappearing mundane.

The demon looked wrong, skin stretched too tight over the elongated bones it was trying to occupy. He released the arrow he'd nocked, but however the demon looked, it wasn't slow, and it was far enough ahead that it managed to dodge in the wide alley. But while it was dodging, he moved in closer, starting to box it in from two sides.

It was taller than most humans, taller than either of his own bodies, and closer now he could see its eyes weren't right either, what looked like some kind of red liquid swirling around in the spaces. He released another arrow but the demon continued to duck and weave, its face stretching out into a distorted grin. It bent around the thrust of a sword and slashed out, arm morphing into a sharp edged limb that he barely managed to avoid, skipping back and to the off side just in time to keep himself intact.

He'd closed in enough with both bodies now that the demon's attention was split, not sure whether to be more wary of bow or sword. He took two quick steps, sword raising, bow drawn back—

Jace crashed back into himself, air punched out of his chest, foundering with his sword in hand but bow missing. His hind brain was a frantic alarm shriek, instinct sending him stumbling back and his deflect rune the last grace that saved him from disembowelment. He managed to draw in air past his seized chest—

One of his selves stumbled, the other compensated for by a sure-footed rune. The demon had seized the moment's advantage and fled, already nearly to the end of the alley and out into a far busier street. He took two steps and made a desperate, high leap, cutting off the demon's exit with just enough room to spare from its immediate lunge with its slashing limb. As he sighted down an arrow, he parried the demon's limb hard with the sword and there was a screech of pain. He released the arrow even as he raised the sword with two hands. The arrow flew true but the demon dropped just in time, lunging for the legs in front of him, and the arrow passed to the right of himself, skidding to the pavement.

He cut downward with the sword but the demon had already pulled back from the attack, the arrow having drawn his attention, and he spun halfway around, deciding which body to take on—

A wash of white hot pain snapped through Jace like the recoil of a whip and he let out a roar of outrage, drawing the sword back and charging forward even as the demon turned to face him—

He released the arrow, this one meeting its mark in the demon's back — too high, but halting the demon where it stood a split second before his sword plunged straight through the demon's stomach.

Thick, sludge-like ichor poured out of the wound, more than that emaciated body would seem able to hold. It ran straight down the blade to his hands, lighting up any skin it touched like it had been set on fire. He yanked the sword back out and shoved it right back in, higher this time, and the demon finally died with another high pitched screech, physical form collapsing inward to nothing.

He dropped his sword. The ichor on his hands was fucking burning like he carried no marks at all. He tried to wipe it off without touching it but he needed— he could use his shirt but he was trying to get it off and there was a quiver in the way. He struggled out of his quiver and flung it away, then got his shirt off and used it to wipe at his hands. It helped but a film of the stuff was still clinging to his skin and, _angel,_ it was still _fucking burning._ He flipped his hands over and used his clean ones to draw a shaky iratze on each wrist and it _worked_ but only for a few seconds, the ichor was too thick and it was still there, re-burning his skin as soon as it was healed, and the ichor on the shirt he still wore was starting to soak through and burn the skin underneath.

He needed to get the fucking holster off. Stopping and starting, he tried through the drawing of a dozen iratzes but now he only had a few seconds after every cycle before the pain became blinding again and he kept fumbling the buckles. Fuck, he needed backup, pick-up, _something—_

Suddenly there was cold water cascading over his hands in the middle of drawing another iratze.

The bond snapped under the blessed relief of the pain finally starting to wash away. Jace took a deep, desperate breath. In front of him Alec staggered back and dropped his hands to his knees like he was completely winded. Izzy came into focus beside him, holding another pitcher of water that she started pouring over his hands, Clary waiting with a rag. Behind them, Jace blearily realized, there was an open door with the noises and smells of a restaurant kitchen emerging out into the dark. Raj was coming out of it with another two pitchers in hand.

Alec lurched back up. His hands were shaking badly but this time he managed to undo the buckles of the holster and tug it off. Together he and Clary stripped Jace's shirt off, Alec throwing it to the side with a barked order not to touch it. Izzy came back with yet another pitcher of water and this time a wet rag. Once she'd wiped him down and dumped a final full pitcher over him for good measure, Alec drew one more iratze on each wrist and he and Jace both stared at Jace's hands, holding their breath for for a full ten seconds, waiting for the burning to return. Alec let his breath out first, pulling Jace into a rough hug that gave Jace the time he needed to get his bearings.

After a moment, he realized they were surrounded by a full patrol group. He drew back from Alec's shoulder and asked in the general direction of Izzy and Clary, "Where did you come from?" His voice wasn't as strong as he would have liked but it didn't break.

"The Institute," Izzy said, still holding a full pitcher like she might need it. "An alarm went off and we got here to find you two."

"We found it by accident," Alec said. "It was some kind of shapeshifter demon, but weird. Nobody touch the shirts or the sword without heavy gloves. The shirts should probably just be burned." Jace saw Izzy look at the discarded clothes with a speculative gleam in her eyes.

"It was dispatched," Jace added. "Just in case that wasn't clear." Alec finally let go of the back of Jace's neck. Alec's hands were a lot steadier than they had been but Jace was still struggling to make it less obvious how badly his own were shaking. He wanted to shove them in his pockets but not only were his pants wet from the last dousing of water, he didn't want to touch them just in case. The way his brain kept wanting to space out wasn't helping anything but, thank the fucking angel, Alec asked Clary to open a portal to get everyone — and the contaminated objects — back to the Institute as quickly as possible.


	8. Chapter 8

A long, _long_ three hours later, Jace was sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed and staring at the wall. They'd been in medical for an hour, then they'd started the debrief, but Alec had kicked him out after the better part of another hour and stayed to finish the last of it himself. Eventually Alec had appeared and sat down next to Jace. They'd been mutually silent and staring at the wall ever since.

There was a bad night coming, the kind where he couldn't stop the loops replaying in his brain. His hands were his weak spot; angel knew leading with your fists meant they were damaged often enough, but sometimes he couldn't just activate his iratze and shake it off. Sometimes it set off a whole cascade of bad memories in his brain that he couldn't crawl out of for hours.

It was stupid. It wasn't even like it'd always been his hands his father had made his point on, that had been broken or burned or _stabbed_ — damn that had been an effective lesson; it had been the one and only time he'd really talked back as a kid — but they were the worst and that was probably why, most of the time, it was his hands. It was stupid and he should definitely be past it, but he always got hung up on the dumbest things and, hell, there was a reason he'd been kicked to the curb when he was ten.

He was exhausted, nauseated, and had a headache building at the base of his skull, which were familiar enough signs, but tonight came with the bonus of his hands still feeling like they weren't _right._ They were fine. He knew they were fine since they and his arms been thoroughly washed three separate times, he'd taken a full shower, and both Alec and Clary had drawn iratzes on him afterward just to be sure.

Adding to the fun was how his sense of Alec next to him was non-existent. It wasn't that the wall between them was up, although it was. The problem was Alec had locked himself up like an impenetrable fortress that radiated tension in a way Jace hadn't felt in a long time. If the first six months of the parabatai bond had been a hell of no barriers, the next two had been exactly like this, a hell of Alec overreacting. Jace had forgotten how empty it could be in his own head when Alec set his mind to keeping Jace out. Knowing Alec, he probably thought he was being _helpful._ Because he was a _dumbass._ With so much echoing and bouncing around in his own brain, Jace didn't have the energy or patience to deal with it.  

There was a scuff of boots in the hallway and then Clary said from the doorway, "Hey, you two need anything?"

Jace leaned his head back against the bed and stared up at the ceiling. "Go away, Alec."

"I'm not leaving until you're—"

"No, no, stop. Just stop," Jace said, dropping his head back down. He started to rub at his eyes, had to remind himself his hands weren't contaminated, and completed the motion half out of spite for his brain. "You're making it— I can't. Not right now."

He felt Alec flinch and Jace closed his eyes in tired frustration, sure his words had hit some target he didn't even know was there.

Heels clicked down the corridor and this time it was Izzy's voice from the door. "Heyyyyy, good news! That really was just super concentrated ichor. The water and soap should have taken care of it and there shouldn't be any lasting effects."

Neither Jace nor Alec said anything. After a minute of silence Izzy finally said, "Yay? Thanks, Iz? That's such good news! You're so awesome, Izzy."

"Right," Alec said, getting his feet under him. "I'm gonna go."

Jace didn't need the bond to hear how Alec was pretending not to be hurt; years of brotherhood supplied that information just fine. He sighed. "Alec—"

"No, no, you're right. The— the distance might help. Magnus will be home by now and wondering where I am anyway." The sound of boots headed down the corridor and faded into the distance. His head didn't get any less empty but it was less painful. Fucking complicated asshole parabatai.

Behind him he heard Clary moving around the room, pulling sleep clothes out. Izzy appeared in his line of sight and settled herself next to his knees, smiling at him. "Hey, how are you doing?"

"A little fucked in the head but I'll be fine. You know, the thing looked emaciated, like it was half starved and really hungry. Maybe it was some kind of bizarre dehydration. How the hell do you dehydrate a demon?"

She shrugged, flipping her ponytail back over her shoulder and stretching her arms up. He realized she'd gone from hours in the training room straight to the alley, and then isolated and tested the ichor on their clothes. She smelled of sweat and the chemicals that permeated the air in the lab and strong hand soap, and she looked like she could lean over against his knee and doze off. At least one of them was likely to sleep well tonight.

He had his knees pulled up and Izzy draped her arm across the one closest to her, her whip shifting ever so slightly along her forearm. It had been doing that a lot lately. Jace reached up and stroked a finger along its scales, getting a bigger shifting in response. Izzy was watching with an amused expression. "Poor thing's as restless as the rest of us with so little to do. The training room's a little tight to do much fun with it, but desperate times, desperate measures. I've been trying to remember to give it extra attention or angel only knows what'll happen the first time I go up against a demon again."

"What do you mean?" he asked, scritching at it's head.

"Mmm, just that if too much energy and boredom builds up, it'll come tearing out and overreact at the first opportunity."

Jace stared at her, his brain shifting gears painfully slow, and then said, "I think I know what the problem is."

Izzy blinked at him and said, "Uh."

"With the— I'll explain tomorrow." He grinned. "Thanks, Iz. You're _so_ awesome."

"Yeah, yeah, you just want me to think I'm back down to just one brother who's a pain in the ass."


	9. Chapter 9

Magnus was stretched out on a couch dozing off when he finally heard the front door open. He yawned and sat up, trying to shake loose the exhaustion long enough to portal Jace back to the Institute. Considering their one to two hour run had apparently morphed into more like four hours, maybe he'd get lucky and Alec would actually be tired enough to sleep. Which would mean Magnus could sleep  _ with _ him, all tangled up in the same bed at the same time. He hummed happily at the thought.

Magnus missed cuddling. Cuddling was in tragically short supply in his life right now.

Alec walked into the main room looking not just tired but in a daze. He was weaponless although Magnus hadn't heard the usual rattle of arrows as he sat down his quiver inside the front door. "Good evening, Alexander, did you lose blondie on the way here?"

It was a few seconds before Alec finally seemed to focus. "No, Jace's back at the Institute." He looked down at himself. "Damn, I forgot I was still wearing all this." He reached down like he was going to unbuckle the empty holster at his thigh, then stopped and pulled his hands back. He lifted one of his boots up to check the sole, and then twisted around without moving his feet to look back the way he'd come in. He turned back around to an increasingly puzzled Magnus and said, "Can you—" He stopped, sighed, and tried again. "The pants, boots, and thigh holster might have traces of a super concentrated ichor on them and need stashed somewhere safe for tonight. Can you get them off me with magic so I don't risk getting it on my hands?"

Magnus' eyebrows went up. "Of course, darling," he said, standing up even as he wove the magic together and banished the clothing to a large glass vessel that he summoned into the back of his workroom. "That's definitely a unique reason for me to be removing your clothes. I take it the presence of ichor means the lull has finally broken?"

Alec stood there in t-shirt, boxer shorts, and socks with a small dagger still at his ankle and went through several slow blinks before saying, "Yeah, there was a demon. Believe it or not, we practically tripped over it stalking a mundane while we were out running. Wait—" Alec held up a hand and Magnus froze halfway between the couch and Alec. "You might want to scour where I just walked, too. Just in case." He was still standing very carefully in the same spot like he didn't dare move.

"Didn't you already walk through the Institute, not to mention Manhattan and Brooklyn?" Magnus asked, nonetheless scattering the magic to ensure the entryway and foyer — and the bottoms of Alec's socks — were free of harmful contaminants.

"Yeah, but humor me. I'm probably being paranoid but it really didn't feel good." He sighed. "Speaking of which, I need to go take a shower. Have you eaten yet?" Alec's whole body relaxed down, apparently feeling like it was finally safe to do so.

"No, not yet. I could order some curry if that will suit you." Magnus walked over to Alec and tangled his fingers in the short sleeves of Alec's shirt, the muscles reassuringly warm and solid under his hands. Alec leaned in to meet him for a belated hello kiss that lingered. Alec's own hands slid up Magnus' arms even as they broke the kiss and he tipped his head forward to lean their foreheads together for a moment.

"That'll work," Alec said as he pulled back, his smile faint but there.

While Alec showered, Magnus called in a take-out order for lamb madras by way of a seelie at Delhi Heights, then sent a text to Luke and Raphael that just said  **_DEMON KILL :D_ ** With the possibility the lull had broken, Magnus was smiling as he slipped into the bathroom where the shower was running. He took the time to clean his face and remove jewelry before changing into sleep pants and a robe in the bedroom. As he returned to the kitchen, his phone chimed with a text from Jace.

**_think I figured it out_**  
**_I'll explain later_ **  
**_alec make it there okay?_ **

**_yes_ **  
**_more or less_ **

**_it was a weird demon_ **  
**_go easy on him_ **

Fifteen minutes later, Magnus was still deciding if he should even try and respond to that when another text came in letting him know the food was ready. He summoned it, spreading it out on the island, and then pulled out dishes to eat on. After a few more minutes the shower was  _ still _ running despite the fact Alec was in there by himself and those were usually 3 minute affairs. Magnus pulled out a couple of tea cups, filled the kettle on the stove with water, and turned on the burner for it to heat. He sorted idly through the leaves they had on hand and pulled out mint tea with the thought that even if the lull was broken, it was probably too soon to be risking anything with caffeine.

Just as the water boiled and he lifted it off the stove, the shower finally shut off. He poured the water over the leaves in the teapot as the sound of a couple drawers opening and closing came from the bedroom. Magnus had just taken the first sip from the cup he'd poured when Alec came out still damp around the edges and wearing his oldest, softest sleep clothes.

"Feel better?" Magnus asked, pouring a second cup and setting it down in front of one of the stools.

"I scrubbed myself down at least five times but yeah, better." He cradled the tea cup in one hand and took the plate Magnus was offering with the other. 

They dished out food and ate in silence, Magnus' curiosity doubling roughly every four minutes until they both finished and he'd cleaned and packaged and dispersed things to appropriate places, except for the teapot and cups. 

Magnus was pouring out the last of the tea just as Alec finally broke the long silence.

"The parabatai bond is… there's something wrong with it."

Magnus slowly sat the teapot back down on the counter and lifted his own cup. Looking back up at Alec over the rim, he said, "I am aware. Jace was here a couple of days ago and asked if you'd mentioned anything."

Alec kept staring at his cup that he was turning in small half circles on the counter. "Yeah, he's pretty mad at me."

That didn't entirely match the tone of the text he'd received a short while earlier. Magnus looked over at his phone, almost picking it back up to check and see if he'd read it wrong. But it was certainly possible to be angry with someone and still concerned about their well being. He took a sip of tea and asked, "Why do you think Jace is angry?"

Alec sighed and pushed the tea cup away. "I swore it wouldn't be a problem. And tonight it almost got him killed. Twice." He flattened his hands on the countertop and stared at them. "The demon was, I don't know, some kind of shape shifter. Izzy confirmed it was concentrated ichor on our clothes but the whole  _ thing _ looked concentrated, like it was half starved. Have you ever heard of—?" He looked up, gesturing vaguely with one hand and then flattening it back on the counter.

"No, I can't say that I have. But there are as many demons in Edom as there are stars in the sky."

"Yeah," Alec said with a sigh, "and this one sucked." He looked back down at the counter, turning his hands over and studying the palms. "The ichor got all over Jace's hands at the end and, apparently, if you concentrate it enough, it burns even our skin. And this burned a lot." Alec flipped his hands back over and Magnus put a hand over one of them, curling his fingers into the palm, rubbing at the back with his thumb and feeling the shift of bone and sinew under the surface.

"You know, when Jace first came to stay with us, I was kind of jealous of how he was so much better at hiding what he didn't want other people to see than I was." A corner of Alec's mouth twitched up in a half grin. "I'd lose my temper or just piss everyone off and end up getting yelled at again but Jace could just smile and do some verbal sleight of hand and he always seemed to come out golden."

He hummed encouragement for Alec to keep talking. 

"The thing is, nobody realizes it except me and Izzy, and Clary now, but sometimes Jace gets this thing that feels like some kind of emotional oil slick. It was awful even back then, befo— even before everything last year." He stopped and reached over for his tea cup, a painfully thin smile for the wisp of blue as Magnus re-warmed it. He sipped at it before continuing. "It doesn't happen as much as it used to, and most of the time it's just a here and gone kind of thing. Jace has always been pretty good at working around it regardless. But this demon—" Alec stopped, then finally started again. "It's like he has a whole storm cloud rolling in.

"So Jace is having a bad night," Magnus said after a moment.

Alec sat the tea cup down but didn't lift his eyes. "And there's nothing I can do to stop it."

"I know you know this, but sometimes the best thing you can do is just be there for somebody. Even if you can't fix whatever is wrong."

"I tried, but he kicked me out." Alec rubbed at his face with one hand, the motion abrupt and frustrated. "He has every right to be angry. I just—" Alec stopped, swallowing hard. He reached over and slid his fingers through Magnus'. "Magnus, it's been  _ breaking." _ His voice had suddenly gone thick with grief, as if the world were ending. "I don't know if I can— I don't—" His words broke off, eyes glassy either with exhaustion or unshed tears, or possibly both. Magnus was beginning to wonder if this weren't some post-lull crash after the extended high of the last month and a half.

He tightened his own hand around Alec's, wishing he could soothe the pain that looked as if it were physically weighing Alec down. But Magnus had been tired even before Alec had arrived home and Alec was starting to look worn clean through, so he decided it was time to give up playing relationship counselor to a couple of hard headed Shadowhunters for the night. "I know you want to make this better, but Jace has weathered storms before and he'll weather this one, too." He stood and tugged at Alec's hand. "Come along, sweetheart. I know it seems dire now but this can wait until morning. You actually look ready to fall over if you don't lay down and that's a situation to be taken advantage of."

Alec let Magnus pull him off the stool and followed his lead halfway to the bedroom, but then stopped. When Magnus turned around to see why, Alec stepped in, face still a mask of sorrow, and kissed him briefly, a sweet brush of his lips against Magnus' own. "Thank you. For listening," he said, free hand coming up to curve around the back of Magnus' neck as he leaned his forehead against Magnus' own.

Magnus reached up and cradled Alec's jaw with his hand, palm scraping over the late night bristles shadowing his skin. "Always, my love. And things will almost certainly look better once the sun has risen." He smiled. "Now into bed with you. There's a month's worth of missed cuddling to start making up to me."


	10. Chapter 10

The next day, Izzy waylaid Jace as soon as he showed his face in the Ops. He hadn't really slept and he should have been exhausted, but one demon wasn't going to wipe out the effects of the lull so he was more like normal rather than bouncing off the walls. Despite the lack of sleep, his head was a lot clearer than it had been for most of the night. He still had about half a headache but he was treating that with one of Clary's favorite chocolate and whipped cream monstrosities that she'd drug him to the coffeehouse for at sunrise. It absolutely had as much sugar in it as he'd suspected and as soon as the effects of the lull wore off he was definitely getting one with three shots of fully caffeinated espresso.

Izzy didn't bother with subtlety, but then she usually didn't. She just planted herself right in front of him and said, "So, fess up, what problem?"

"Not here," he said. Ops wasn't crowded, but this also wasn't a conversation he wanted overheard.

She spun around to loop one arm through his elbow and marched him all the way up to the residential floor and into her bedroom. She shut the door, flattened her back against it like the drama queen she was, and stared at him pointedly.

"There's something going on with the parabatai bond," he said, taking a long drink of liquid sugar.

"Yeahhhhh," she said as she walked over and sat down on the bed. "I'd already guessed that considering what a twitchy pain in the ass Alec's been, but congratulations on finally telling me. You had a week before I beat it out of one of you in the training room."

"You already—" He squinted at her. "By one of us you obviously mean Alec."

"Mmmmm, the grumpier he gets, the scrappier he is and he's _really_ stubborn. You keep your head better but cave to my demands a lot quicker. I was still 50/50 on the decision."

Jace had to admit she wasn't wrong. "We've been getting really annoying feedback anytime we do something small that the bond has an effect on. Like every time we draw an iratze on each other we get this nasty little snap of pain. It wasn't that bad when it started but it's been escalating for months. If we're doing something big, like sparring or, say, fighting a demon, it periodically snaps back and breaks."

 _"Breaks?"_ She'd been leaning back on her hands but now she sat up, looking alarmed. "Okay, you're going to have to explain that part better."

"Yeah, that seems to be the word that freaks people out." He took another drink and went to sit down on the bed, turning and pulling one leg up so he could face her. "It used to be that if we were in a fight or sparring or whatever, Alec and I had this sixth sense for wherever the other one was. But it's not like I consciously knew what Alec was going to do before he did it, it was just instinctual. I mean, we could still spar and I could still kick his ass, right?"

Izzy rolled her eyes and gestured for him to continue.

"It started changing at some point and for a while it was like playing both sides of a chess board. You can still be playing two different games but it's not like you can fake out your opponent." He picked at the edge of the cardboard sleeve on the cup. "Now if we're in a fight, or sparring, then there is only one player and one game. I am Alec and he is me. The rest of the time we can keep the bond locked down, the walls up between us, and it's fine, but as soon as we let the bond out then _we_ are not Jace and Alec, _I_ am parabatai. I have two bodies, two sets of weapons, and one mission."

He glanced up and saw Izzy's eyes had gotten a lot wider.

"We can control it," he said, which he thought was obvious but she was looking pretty alarmed. "Sort of. It's not like it just happens randomly."

She didn't look completely reassured but she said, "Okay, by 'breaks' you mean it _breaks."_

"Yeah, suddenly I'm Jace again for like 3 seconds before it re-engages, and, let me tell you, it is hell on my reaction time."

Izzy leaned forward and smacked him upside the head. "If you'd told me this sooner we could've worked on that." She plucked his cup out of his hand and took a drink. "Okay, so what's Alec's deal here?"

"Why is everyone always stealing my coffee?" he asked, taking the cup back. "I still don't actually know. The changes are freaking him out and he's stonewalling me on even talking about any of it, let alone trying to fix it."

"I could smell the chocolate from over here. Last night you said you knew what the problem is. I'm assuming you mean about the breaking. Wait," she said, her eyes going wide again, "did it break while you were fighting the shape shifter?"

"Yeah, a couple of times. Which wasn't fun." He scooted back a foot to give himself a better shot at dodging the next time she made a swipe for his cup. With his free hand, he reached over and tapped on her wrist, then scritched under her whip's chin when it lifted its head in response. "The bond used to just be like a phone call you forgot to end, always running between me and Alec. But now it's more like it's own thing, like your whip. But it's not just bored and restless like your whip is, it's starving. We've been keeping it locked down all the time, feeding it with scraps of sparring and an occasional demon for a meal. And lately—"

"—lately no demons, just scraps. Okay, so we say it's hungry. What are we theorizing overpowered parabatai bonds actually need? I mean, if it's like this," she shook her wrist, the whip shifting, "then you're going to have to stop locking it down. No _wonder_ it's cranky. But it sounds pretty out of control and you guys are a little too busy to be spending all your time hunting down demons elsewhere. Even after the lull ends."

Jace swirled his cup around, mixing up the chocolate that had settled on the bottom. "Yeah, I had a lot of time to think about that last night. Mostly it seems to feed on shared energy. I thought about a big group sparring session, but I think we need to shake it up more."

"You have an idea," Izzy said, kicking off her shoes, pulling her feet up to the bed, and propping her chin on her knees.

"You can't laugh."

Izzy immediately laughed. "Oh fuck, sorry, no go ahead. I'm ready."

Jace rolled his eyes, then said, "Dancing. Club dancing, not ballroom."

Izzy froze. He narrowed his eyes at her and waited. She tightened her lips down and struggled through the effort, then finally blew out her breath. "Okay, I've got a hold on it now. Explain."

"I don't expect _Alec_ to dance."

"Oh good," she said and fell over on her side, laughing. Once she'd stopped wheezing and had herself back under control, she pushed her hair back off her face and said, "Yeah, that never would have worked. I mean, I have technically seen Alec on Pandemonium's dance floor but there was a _lot_ of alcohol."

"I still can't believe I missed that," Jace grumbled.

Izzy rolled back up to sitting and smirked. "That'll teach you to volunteer for a training run in Idris when you could have been going out with us. So, dancing? What?"

"Somebody had to go. Look," he said, "Sparring is just dancing with weapons—"

"That's one way to describe it."

"—but the problem is, if we're sparring together then I'm dancing with myself and if we're sparring against someone else then it's no different than the demon last night."

"Less potential dying," Izzy said.

"You know what I mean. This would be totally different but still an adrenaline thing. As long as Alec's on board, I think it'll work. I mean, we'll still have to let it out more once it's not so out of control or we'll be in the same situation, but yeah."

She studied him for a minute and finally said, "Eh, fine, you've convinced me this far. Experiment logistics?"

"Public, loud, and somebody to dance with that knows what's going on. To be on the safe side, someone that it won't freak Alec out to get up close and personal with."

"Are you saying not Clary?"

"Not Clary," Jace said, shaking his head. "My feelings toward Clary are, as well established, not brotherly. That seems a little advanced."

"Magnus, making Pandemonium the obvious choice and Alec's comfortable there," Izzy said. "But, wait, that's kind of the same problem."

Jace shrugged. "As long as Alec doesn't care, I don't either. I wasn't saying _never_ Clary, I just don't want to spring too much on him in the middle of this whole thing. I actually thought of you first, but I want you to stay with Alec in case it all goes weird. If we're gonna give it more room then we have to be able to control it better and I don't have any idea how that's going to work. We've never really tried it, just let it loose, but it never used to be so strong so it didn't matter."

Izzy smiled suddenly, wide and bright. "You know, the Downworlders will definitely notice you two dancing together so this is all going to be very entertaining for me. Now all you have to do is convince Magnus and Alec." She clasped her hands together and bounced on the bed. "This is going to be _fun_."

Jace drained the chocolate dregs from his cup and seriously considered inventing an excuse to go get another one.


	11. Chapter 11

Alec kept coincidentally not being where Jace was — there were texts and he passed him in Ops, even quick phone calls, but no one-on-one time. He knew Alec had left mad, but Jace had thought Alec had been more upset than anything and, anyway, he didn't carry a grudge with _Jace._ Or, at least, he didn't used to, but the five foot thick concrete wall Alec had managed to put up between them was holding firm and it had left Jace with a continuous, low level headache that nothing, including iratzes, could wipe out.

Jace had finally realized Alec wasn't just avoiding him but intentionally ducking him after Jace had texted him twice to ask if they could talk and then Alec had "forgotten" to meet him. He had word from Izzy that Alec had beaten the living daylight out the equipment and destroyed most of the targets in the last few days, but apparently he'd been waiting until he knew Jace was out of the Institute or otherwise occupied, which meant Jace couldn't corner him in the training room or range. Alec hadn't spent so little time in his office since he'd become head of the Institute and Jace didn't actually know where Alec was getting his work done most of the time.

It was _obnoxious._ Jace would have been more impressed if he hadn't been so fucking annoyed.

On Wednesday, after four days of bullshit, Jace had walked into Alec's office on the tail end of Izzy yelling at him about how many targets he was destroying, managing to cover both very irritated at having to replace so many and very concerned for him at the same time. Once she ran out of steam, she'd seized Alec in a bear hug and said passionately, "You are an _asshole,"_ before storming out. She and Clary had a meeting with Alec in ten minutes, but Izzy never missed an opportunity for a dramatic exit, regardless of how temporary.

Izzy's parting hug attack had surprised Alec and Jace had sensed a moment of weakness. Then Alec turned, finally clocked his presence, and Jace had actually seen the moment of panic before Alec immediately steam rolled into the quarterly budget numbers. Jace barely got a word in edgewise before Alec suddenly had a meeting he had to get to. In Alicante.

Jace followed Alec's speed walk at a much slower pace and found Izzy and Clary standing in Ops, Clary with a tablet in hand, both of them staring toward the entryway and the Alicante portal. "Didn't we have a meeting in, like, five minutes?" Clary asked.

"Yeah, sorry, my parabatai literally just left the country to avoid talking to me."

"It's midnight in Idris," Izzy said flatly.

"He's probably remembering that about now." Jace sighed and scrubbed at his face. At least there was only one way back unless Alec _really_ wanted to jump through hoops, so Jace grabbed a chair, bribed one of the runners to go get him one of what he was calling Clary's coffees, and settled in to wait.

Three hours later, Alec nonchalantly strolled back through the portal like he'd legitimately been doing Clave business in Alicante at 3am. There was a moment when he saw Jace waiting for him that Jace almost expected Alec to turn around and walk right back out — either through the portal or through the front door. Jace consciously kept his muscles relaxed, but he was fully prepared to tackle Alec to the ground if necessary.

Alec didn't bolt. His shoulders sagged as if in world weary defeat before he straightened back up, face closing off.

"Your room?" Jace asked.

Alec didn't say anything, just led the way with his head up, plowing ahead like he was 15 years old and walking into a particularly bad reprimand, like a martyr accepting his divine right. Following him, Jace sighed and rubbed at the back of his head, wishing it would help ease the resurging headache.

In Alec's room, rarely used these days, Jace closed the door. Alec leaned against the wall next to the door, planting himself as close to the exit as possible. He was staring at the floor with his arms crossed tight over his chest like it was the only way to keep from flying apart.

For a moment, Jace tried to remember if he'd ever had this hard a time reading Alec, even before the bond. When he'd been trying to, anyway. There'd been a lot of times Alec had caught Jace by surprise just because Jace hadn't been paying attention, but there were damn few things he could think of that would have Alec panicking this much. As far as Jace knew, everyone on Alec's shortlist was safe and accounted for.

"I think I've figured out what's wrong with the parabatai bond," Jace said.

It didn't help. If Alec could set things on fire with his eyes — well, the Institute would have burned down years ago, but at the moment the floor would definitely be smoking. Jace said, "The bond is bigger and stronger than it used to be. It needs more room and we gotta stop starving it."

Alec's head snapped up and he stared at Jace. He was still locked up as tight as Jace had ever felt but he was clearly surprised.

"Okay, what the fuck did you think I was going to say?"

Alec lets out a breath Jace hadn't even realized he'd been holding. "The opposite."

"What? Why? The opposite how?"

Alec didn't completely relax and he shifted his gaze over to the far wall, but the set of his shoulders eased. "That we've damaged it from everything we've put it through."

Jace actually took a minute to process that, then finally said, _"What?_ How?"

" _How?"_ Alec finally looked him in the eye, face suddenly twisting up in grief, or maybe anger. Jace still couldn't actually tell. "Which way do you want? Do you want to start with the time I disavowed you or how then I almost _broke the bond_ trying to track you?"

Jace hadn't known about the disavowal, but it was hardly a surprise considering the catastrophic fuck-ups that had been spinning out left and right at that point. "If it makes you feel better, I've said a lot of things about you in the past few days that were less than complimentary."

"It's _breaking,_ Jace! What happens the next time one of us moves a fraction too slow and you end up sliced in half? What happens—" his breath hitched, "What happens the next time it breaks and _it doesn't come back?"_

"And when it's not breaking it's stronger than ever, Alec—"

"You died!" Alec suddenly shouted.

"You died first!" Jace yelled back, straightening up.

"I didn't lie to you about it!"

"You didn't have the chance to because I was there and it sucked!"

There was silence for a moment. Jace paced a few steps into the room before returning to the spot in front of Alec. "So since the demon last week you've, what, been freaked out about the next one? You didn't think to maybe help me figure out how to fix it?" He could understand why Alec would be worried — hell, Jace had been worried — but they'd been in worse situations with half as much advantage even if they _couldn't_ fix it before the next one came along. Alec had never backed down from a challenge before.

Alec had gone back to staring at the floor. "I didn't know you were trying to fix it."

"You would have if you'd stood still long enough for me to tell you. What the fuck did you think I'd been trying to do?"

Alec looked back up at Jace and leaned back against the wall, bracing himself like he needed the support. "I thought you were going to tell me the bond had become a liability and we needed to cut the runes. And I needed…" Alec huffed out a breath, oblivious to how Jace himself had stopped breathing. "I needed to be ready. To hear that. I thought I _could_ be ready to hear that."

The rage bloomed in Jace's brain and he saw Alec's eyes widen before Jace even registered that he'd already clenched his fist and swung. Fortunately, Alec's old reflexes were still in working order and he dropped faster than Jace could connect. Jace stumbled, fist scraping the wall, brain tripping over instincts he thought he'd gotten the better of, and it gave Alec the opening to pop back up, grab Jace's arm, and spin him around to pin Jace's back to his chest with the arm trapped between them. Alec had left Jace's shoulder loose but he had a firm grip on Jace's wrist and his arm was locked tight across Jace's chest; Jace could have easily freed himself, but he didn't. It had been a well practiced maneuver for all that Alec hadn't had to use it in years.

Whether from surprise or on purpose, the wall Alec had been doggedly keeping up had crumbled and if Alec hadn't been holding him up, Jace would have staggered under the nausea/terror/grief/hope/surprise that flooded over him from Alec. As a sense of Alec resettled in the back of his brain, Jace grimly swallowed down the remnants of the blind rage. He finally managed to loosen his still clenched fist, his free hand coming up to grasp at the contracted muscle of Alec's arm.

"That was not the reaction I expected," Alec said, leaning his head down against the back of Jace's own.

After a few seconds of making sure the tunnel vision had cleared, Jace said, "Nice reaction time, though."

"You good?"

"Yeah," Jace said. "Yeah, I'm good."

Alec released him and Jace walked over and dropped onto the floor beside the bed, leaning back against it. Alec followed and slumped down beside him.

"Just to be really, really clear, I do not want to fucking _cut the runes."_ He took a breath. "What I'm talking about is literally the opposite of that and if you ever suggest it again, I will break both your kneecaps. If I'm feeling generous, I might heal them for you afterward."

Alec tilted his head back against the bed and stared up at the ceiling. "I feel like that would backfire on you."

"Do I feel like this is something you should test me on?"

"…No."

"So, as I was saying, I'm pretty sure what's happening is we keep shoving it down in its little box and when we let it out, it's so hungry that it tries to take everything and gets out of control. It's _breaking_ because it's so wound up. Like a whole Institute of Shadowhunters after an eight week demon lull."

Alec sat there in silence for a bit, looking like he was holding the idea up against his own memories, then finally said, "Okay, and when we activate runes?"

"We're poking it with a stick. It's grumpy. I think it takes after you."

Alec huffed out a laugh. "So what are we supposed to do about it. You're not worried so I'm assuming you have some idea. There's only so many demons to fight and we do have other responsibilities than just patrol these days."

Jace nodded. "Not fighting, or not _just_ fighting with it. I think we need to stop keeping it locked down all the time but we need to mix up the big things. It needs a different kind of workout. Remember what I said the last time we sparred? That it was like six hours of dancing?"

 _"What,"_ Alec said and actually recoiled, barely catching himself with one arm just in time to keep from hitting the floor. It would have been funny under other circumstances.

Jace held up a hand. "Stop worrying, I'm talking just me. I'm going to do it _for_ you."

Alec just looked at him with slightly less wide eyed alarm but plenty of confusion.

Jace sighed. "Come on, we're going to the loft. We're gonna need Magnus for this."

 

* * *

 

Unlike Izzy, Magnus hadn't outright laughed when Jace had laid it out. He'd looked really entertained but he'd also said the idea had merit, which had cut through a lot of Alec's worry. Of course, it was Magnus, so then he'd insulted Jace's dance skills and suggested Jace would need to step up his usual game but whatever, Jace would show him… Something.

It had been near sunrise before Jace had made his way back to the Institute and he sent Izzy a text that said **_pandemonium tonight_ ** before crawling in bed next to Clary for a precious few hours of sleep.


	12. Chapter 12

It was after sundown when Izzy enthusiastically towed Jace and Clary out of the Institute and towards the loft to meet up with Alec and Magnus. It wasn't that Jace was dragging his feet — he was _very_ invested in this working — but combining clubbing with random experimentation had put Izzy over the moon. Jace had woken up to her literally pouncing on him and shrieking with joy.

Once Jace's heart had stopped pounding, he'd grabbed his phone and taken a photo of Izzy's ecstatic face looming over him and sent it to Alec with the text **_the wake-up calls you miss out on by not sleeping here_ **.

A few minutes later, Alec had texted back **_I like my wake-up calls these days tyvm_ **.

Jace had suggested to Izzy that Clary needed something to wear, which was technically a lie, but Izzy had brightened up even further and rushed off to find her. It was a win-win situation: Clary was endlessly entertained by hyper Izzy and Jace had gotten another hour of sleep before the door slammed back open again.

At the loft they found just Alec, who said, "Magnus had a thing for somebody," while making vague hand gestures. It could have meant anything, but probably had something to do with the charred smell lingering in the air. "He said he'd see us there." Alec tugged his shirt cuff down over the bracelets he was wearing before running a nervous hand through his hair.

They'd kept the bond locked down, but without Alec focused on locking Jace out, they could both feel how restless it was. After almost a full week it was struggling to break loose and Jace was refusing to second guess the plan because he didn't have any better ideas. Besides, Alec was nervous enough for the both of them.

After Izzy and Alec did their usual thing where she made invisible adjustments that he bitched about and readjusted, Izzy demanded Clary's approval, which she dutifully provided even if she didn't manage to keep a straight face. Alec huffed, rolled his eyes, and all but shoved everyone out the door.

They rolled into Pandemonium a short while later, weaving through the heavy Friday night crowd, Jace holding onto Clary's hand and the two of them trailing Izzy and Alec. As soon as they'd cleared the entrance area, Jace could feel Alec start to subconsciously relax by degrees. It wouldn't stop being hilarious any time soon how comfortable Alec was at a Downworlder club these days, but tonight it was also going to be useful.

Magnus had apparently concluded his business for the evening since they passed him holding court in his favorite spot, and Jace saw Alec catch Magnus' eye but he didn't stop. The attendant behind Magnus had already hooked a hand into his collar to help tug off the jacket Magnus was slithering out of on his way up and after Alec.

Once they'd made their way into the VIP lounge and acquired drinks, Alec led them unerringly to a booth that was conveniently empty of anyone but Magnus. Jace didn't get it, but while Alec hated dancing, he liked watching Magnus dance and who it was with didn't seem to matter. What Alec usually did at Pandemonium was plant himself somewhere with a good view of the VIP dance floor, nurse a drink that was more fruit than alcohol, and watch.

Alec slid into the booth to kiss Magnus hello and then Magnus slid out to greet Clary and Izzy before leaning in like he was going to hug Jace. Jace let him and Magnus said into his ear, "If this hurts him somehow I will make you miserable in the most inconvenient ways, blondie." Jace rolled his eyes but Magnus had already pulled away and he and Izzy were heading out to dance.

Alec had settled into the booth, looking more relaxed than Jace had seen him in over a week, and one of the women that was usually draped over Magnus was sliding in next to him and up tight to his right side, already chattering in his ear. Alec liked to call these bitch sessions "staying informed of Downworld activities" but Jace preferred the term gossiping — still accurate and irritated Alec as a bonus. Jace left Alec to it and and went to dance with Clary for a while out on the main floor. No way was he going into this thing without warming up first.

After they'd been there an hour and Jace had downed a couple of shots, he left Clary with the task of finding Izzy and wound his way back to the VIP section. Alec had been joined by a couple more Downworlders and appeared to be listening to the werewolf on his left side with one ear while watching Magnus dance. Jace was pretty sure the wolf was one of Luke's new kids that he'd taken in. It had been a hellish week when an incident down in Jersey had led to Luke offering to help that pack out and then trying to deal with a dozen new baby wolves that didn't know what the fuck was going on. They weren't actually kids, this one was around Jace's age, but, like the rest of the group he'd come in with, he was still tripping over himself and confused by Shadow World politics. They were a twitchy bunch, still settling both into the city and to being occasionally furry, but this one seemed comfortable enough with Alec, who was looking amused at whatever was being said. As soon as the wolf spotted Jace nearly to the edge of the table, though, he stopped talking and lost all the animation he'd had, subtly shrinking closer to Alec.

Well now Jace just felt like an asshole.

Jace could sense Alec's sudden, deliberate calm, which to a wolf was as good as broadcasting Jace wasn't a threat. He had been intending to kick the guy out so he could talk to Alec but instead he looked at the vampire on the other side that had been there when Jace had gone out to dance. She looked amused, but she and the other one next to her both cleared out so Jace could slide in.

"I think you've already met my brother Jace," Alec was saying, loud enough for Jace to hear over the throbbing beat. "He's dating Clary."

Jace smiled and waved from Alec's other side even as the wolf visibly relaxed at the mention of close ties to both Alec, who he clearly already trusted, and his alpha.

Before Alec could finish the introductions, Clary and Izzy tumbled back to the booth and Clary greeted the wolf with a cheery, "Erik!"

Jace took advantage of the distraction to lean over to Alec's ear and say, "Hey, you ready?"

Alec tightened back up with nerves instantly and the wolf on his far side was suddenly wide eyed, trapped between Alec and Clary and looking ready to bolt straight over the table — or flip it, if necessary. Clary was on it, though, one of her hands on his arm as she spoke to him quietly enough Jace couldn't tell what she was saying. Whatever it was, the wolf stepped back from totally alarmed to just uneasy.

Alec grimaced sheepishly at Jace and let his guard back down. "Yeah, I'm ready."

On the other side of Alec, Clary had settled the wolf back down to harmless and she must have given him some kind of excuse to have him sliding out looking relaxed about it rather than like he was fleeing for his life. Magnus was there at the edge of the booth, taking the wolf by the arm, saying something that made the kid laugh.

Jace turned to face Alec, pulling one leg up to sit sideways on the seat. The barriers between them quickly thinning to near nothing, Jace swallowed down Alec's faint nerves and unfocused his eyes, staring past Alec's shoulder to settle himself into his skin as well as he could. The bond, sensing imminent freedom, was lunging against their combined control like a hunting dog on a leash. Once Jace was felt as anchored as he was going to get, he refocused on Alec. "Remember, we're going for control. Halfway open, not all or nothing."

Alec nodded and said, "Ready." Jace carefully eased back on the tight grip he'd been keeping on the bond, letting the box start to spill open.

Jace had thought he was braced for it, but the sense of Alec rising in his brain was like a punch to the gut after the last week. He saw Alec's jaw tighten, could feel Alec stubbornly anchored in himself even as the golden light of the bond licked at the edges of Jace's peripheral vision, trying to draw them in and wrap them up in each other, leaving no sense of who was who. Jace stretched out his neck and let his own control slip a little more, focusing on the edges of his own skin even as his parabatai rune prickled.

He started to move, just a shift of his weight in preparation to slide out of the booth, but then froze when the balance they were holding nearly collapsed. Jace looked back at Alec just in time to catch a flash of gold in his eyes. That was new. But it was a problem for later. Jace refocused and, between them, they managed to steady the push-pull. He took a deep breath and eased his way around to face forward.

He stopped and took stock. He was still Jace. Alec was still _there,_ but they were definitely themselves.

He slid slowly out of the booth, past a hovering Izzy who immediately slid in. He steadied himself against the table while she and Clary arranged Alec between them to their satisfaction. Jace could smell Izzy's shampoo as she leaned in front of Alec, feel Clary's fine boned hand wrapping around his left wrist. Alec was watching him, waiting, and Jace could see himself, could feel Alec's wary anticipation. Jace straightened back up and turned, walking away, the bond sullen and restless, but holding. Something caused the VIP bouncer to do a double take at him as he passed through the curtain but Jace just kept walking.

He was Jace.

He was threading through the crowd of bodies on the main dance floor, looking for Magnus. People were brushing against him on all sides, a mix of mundanes and Downworlders out here in the main throng, more than one set of eyes snagging on his runes or his face and melting back into the crowd. One seelie leaned over their mundane partner's shoulder and winked at Jace when his gaze passed over them. He felt complete like he hadn't in days, like some itch in his brain had finally gone away along with the headache and things had locked back down where they should be.

He was _also_ Alec.

He could feel the smooth surface of the table under his forearms, the coldness of the glass Clary handed to him, the press of Izzy along his right side. He could see both her and Clary leaning around to look at his face like it was doing something fascinating. The rapid cadence of Izzy's chatter was hard to focus on under the heavy beat of the music with so many things demanding his attention, but the pattern and pitch of it were familiar and comforting. He had a shivery relief deep in his bones that the bond wasn't going anywhere, at least not today.

Magnus finally emerged from the crowd, a sovereign surveying his territory, walking towards Jace with his body moving like he'd been dancing for hours and hadn't quite stopped for something so commonplace as walking. The club lights picked up the lines of glitter under his eyes, the necklaces he wore shifting with the sway of his body, the way his hair swept up and back down over his forehead leaving him feeling both fond and anticipatory. Jace's gaze dropped to Magnus' mouth and he abruptly realized he was getting Alec's point of view of Magnus. Jace laughed and Magnus raised an eyebrow.

Jace shook his head, shouted, "It's fine, just really weird."

Magnus tilted his head as if he needed it to hear the throbbingly loud music better, then lifted one hand, smirking in implicit challenge. "If you think you can keep up with me."

"Oh, you're on, warlock."

Magnus' smirk grew teeth.

"His eyes are like… gold," Clary said. "I mean, not like solid gold obviously, but they keep flashing. Shining? Something. It's kind of like what Jace's eyes do but different."

"And yours," Izzy added, not looking away from Alec.

"Yeah, but I don't see mine."

Clary had her chin propped in one hand and she used the other to nudge Alec's hand that was still absently holding onto the glass. He automatically lifted it and took a sip and his mouth twisted up with a moment of too sweet/just right confusion. Izzy looked at her and Clary shrugged. "Jace hates these. I wanted to see what would happen."

He started to say something, some combination of _I still hate them_ and _They taste great_ but it all got tangled up and he ended up just glaring at her and pushing it away.

"I love experimenting," Izzy said, with relish, looking giddy.

There were people everywhere — of course there were people everywhere, that had been half the point — but they always seemed to be a split second ahead or behind of where they should have been and he was bumping people he'd thought he'd miss entirely and sliding around someone only to realize there was no one there. No one noticed, at least he didn't think anyone did — it was Friday night on the main dance floor of Pandemonium, after all — but his sense of his own outlines was slipping, the constant brushing of other bodies too random to focus on. Jace stumbled a half step. He caught himself but Magnus paused and looked back.

The club's music changed over and Magnus turned and slid his free hand around to Jace's lower back. Jace grabbed at the arm around his waist, trying desperately to remember _here_ and _I am_ without shoving Alec out or just crumbling under the onslaught of golden light that threatened to drown him. "Still doing okay?" Magnus asked close to his ear. They were an island of two standing still in an ocean of movement, the bodies brushing against his back and sides like waves rushing in and receding.

"Alec, you okay?" Izzy asked, one of her small hands covering his as Clary's hand came up scratch soothingly at the back of his neck.

Jace could feel sweat starting to trickle down his temples and someone bumped harder into his back. Magnus shifted slightly and behind Jace there was distinct yelp under the pulse of the music. Jace set his jaw, holding the bond back at halfway, holding Alec's breath, holding Izzy's hand, holding onto Magnus' arm, holding—

"Shit," Jace said, gasped, bracing himself against Magnus as it all rose in a flood. "It's everything. It's everything at once—"

 _"Lilith,_ you're like a half grown warlock," Magnus said still close to Jace's ear.

Magnus pulled back, planted a hand in the middle of Jace's chest, and pushed. Jace almost stumbled, but managed to keep his feet and ceded to the steady pressure. Gasping for air, he walked backward, confused by not crashing into anyone but apparently following a straight, body wide path that ended abruptly against the hard curve of a support column. The edges of his skin were bleeding into static, blurring into the music and the voices, and the liquid gold of the bond was hazing over his vision, sliding down his throat and into his lungs.

" _Focus_ ," Magnus said against his ear again, just loudly enough to be heard over the chaos. "You know how to focus, parabatai, pick one thing and breathe. Let the rest of it go for now. Isabelle, Clary, and I, we all have you."

The bond rushed and seethed under his skin and Jace took a desperate breath. Dozens of sweaty, perfumed bodies pressed around them but he and Magnus were close enough that the smell of his sweat and sandalwood came through and it was a scent that made Alec reflexively feel _safe_ and _home_ and _love_. Jace didn't even have to let the emotions through, they were already there, wrapping around him like a Pavlovian response, and the next breath Jace took was a fraction easier. He closed his eyes.

There was a heartbeat there between Magnus' hand planted against his chest and the pillar at his back — two heartbeats, really. Alec was anchored solidly with the booth at his back, the table under his arms, Izzy and Clary to either side defining him. Jace sank down through his own body and focused on the floor under his feet that trembled in time with the music. The same tempo was like a physical presence in the air around him, crashing against his skin as dozens, if not hundreds, of bodies amplified it.

Taking one more deep breath, he opened his eyes and found Magnus watching him closely. The bond was still restless but it was bouncing off Jace's own sense of the music's beat— yes, _there_ , that was what he'd been trying to do. Jace couldn't quite manage to project the confidence he would have preferred, but it was Magnus so Jace gave up on trying and just said, "I'm good."

Magnus smiled and said, "Then all you have to do is follow my lead, nephilim." His hand went from pushing to grabbing Jace by the shirt front and he pulled Jace back out into the crowd, bodies melting out of his path with a flick of Magnus' fingers and the blue shimmer of magic.

Alec opened his eyes, the less intense beat in the VIP lounge still enough he could feel it through the floor, the taste of it on Jace's tongue like he'd drunk it down (and he would, if he could, because music could be as essential as food for Jace, and Alec _knew_ that about him but Alec had never _felt_ it). Jace's awareness of the beat of the music was shifting Alec's perception. Magnus dancing was always a distraction, but filtered through Jace's sense of rhythm, it was like looking at a whole new dimension on top, a level Alec didn't even know he'd been missing. He unclenched his fists and both Clary and Izzy gratefully retrieved their hands, shaking them out, but gamely offered their other ones in exchange. Alec laid his hands flat on the table instead and focused his eyes on the surface between them, holding himself still as Jace's muscle memory followed Magnus' lead in time to the club's heartbeat.

Magnus was keeping at least one hand somewhere on Jace most of the time, whether to help keep him anchored or to pull him back if he drifted Jace didn't know, but it was accomplishing both. He'd quickly started feeling buzzed, the bond effervescing in his blood like alcohol, and he'd half stumbled a couple more times, the bond flaring with confused excitement. Alec, with his own buzz, thought Magnus was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and Jace's amusement percolated through their mutual consciousness. Jace's body was loosening up, finding its center, his iron grip on the bond relaxing as it scattered like sparks along his skin, skittered around his feet, rose up in Alec's giddiness, and pulsed in the beat Alec was tapping on the table. It had stopped fighting them, soaking up their mutual adrenaline like a feast.

"He's smiling," Izzy said. "It can't be going too badly."

Fortunately, there weren't many ways to screw up club dancing in this much of a crowd. The point of it was the throbbing of the music, the heat, the bodies grinding together, the sensory overload of the strobing lights. Jace's conscious effort was on tracking the beat, his subconscious mirroring and reacting to Magnus, even as Alec felt the slip-slide of Magnus' shirt over hard muscle underneath and the crush of so many bodies pressing in, drew Jace's eyes to the curve of Magnus' neck, drowned in the near deafening volume of the music. Alec had sunk into the sensations, but Jace could let him. He held fast for Alec the sense of Izzy and Clary bracketing him and the relative quiet of the booth he was sitting in like a tangible anchor of calm.

Time was the thing he lost track of. He didn't know how many long club mixes had spilled from one to another, differences registering only as subtle changes in the beat. In the booth, the conversation between Izzy and Clary ebbed and flowed around Alec, each of them resting a hand on one of his wrists. It was in the half moment between one mix rolling into another, the liminal space where the crowd was split between falling through the last and holding their breath in anticipation of the next, when Magnus caught Jace's face between both his hands to hold him still. He tilted his head to the side with a questioning lift of his eyebrows and Jace nodded.  

They wound their way off the dance floor, Magnus pulling him along by the hand like he didn't trust Jace not to get lost. He probably wasn't wrong, there was definitely some lingering disorientation, but Jace's head started to clear out of the worst of the crowd and into a rush of slightly cooler air. Magnus let him go when the crowd thinned but kept leading the way, detouring to the front bar and yelling something in the ear of a seelie with bright green hair and wearing a lot of silver.

"Shove out for a minute," Alec said as Jace and Magnus approached the VIP lounge and Izzy and Clary reacted immediately, sliding out to make room next to him.

Actually seeing Alec again — and, by extension, himself — threw him off for a second, the surreality suddenly registering to their two separate selves in a way it didn't when the bond was turned wide open. Jace slid into the booth on Alec's left side, Magnus on his right, with Izzy and Clary bracketing the outside.

Jace felt way too tired for having danced to a few songs. Izzy was immediately up on her knees and laying halfway across the table from the far side of Magnus. "Well??" she demanded.

Jace looked at Alec and, by mutual agreement, they eased back from the bond, letting it fall rather than shoving it away. They hadn't been sure how it would react, how exactly they were going to close it up without locking it down, but it curled up between them like an invisible presence, humming contentedly. Jace closed his eyes, took a deep breath and blew it out. He opened them, sure he was alone in his own brain again, even if he still felt a little drunk.

Magnus' drink order suddenly arrived with something for everyone and he distributed them with a flick of the wrist. Jace's drink turned out to be his favorite whiskey; Magnus, at least, thought things had gone well. There was still a final test, though. Jace sat down his glass and glanced around to check that no one was paying attention to them, then reached over, folded Alec's arm up, and activated his enkeli rune. It shimmered pale gold, a flatter and purer color than runes usually were when activated with a stele, and the sensation it came with was like the stretching of a well used muscle.

Jace grinned and said, "I have the best ideas."

Alec laughed a little hysterically, one hand coming up to cover his face, even as the rest of the table mostly groaned and rolled their eyes.

Then Jace looked at Magnus and said with deep sincerity, "He is so stupidly gone on you."

"Jace!" Alec protested while Magnus hid a smile in his drink.

"What? This isn't news to anybody, I'm just underlining it for emphasis."


	13. Chapter 13

Magnus and Alec portaled into the living room of the loft a short while later, Alec still a bit giddy around the edges like he was a little drunk on angel magic or a lot relieved in relation to the same. It had been a busy afternoon and an eventful evening but it wasn't particularly late and Magnus, finally recovered from the demon lull, was far from tired.

"Would you like another drink?" he asked, walking to the bar.

"Magnus," Alec said and Magnus paused. "I know the last two months have been pretty crazy. For everybody, but you were the one who had to put up with us, with me, and I just wanted to say—" Magnus turned back around to find Alec running a hand through his hair and looking bashful. It was adorable. "Actually I'm not sure what to say," he admitted. "I'm sorry? Thank you? We'll do better next time? I mean, hopefully it won't be anywhere near as bad, but still. All of those things."

Magnus smiled and turned back to mix his drink. "I don't think you need to be sorry as you made a valiant effort to deal with the situation, but the sentiment is appreciated and you're welcome."

Magnus heard the balcony doors open a moment later, what little breeze there was to be had on a humid August night wafting in. Glass in hand, he joined Alec in the doorway, offering him his glass. Alec took it, testing it with a cautious sip. He made a neutral noise that Magnus interpreted as 'drinkable but not _great'_ and Magnus added that information to his growing mental inventory. It likely needed to be sweeter or lighter for Alec's tastes. Or stronger.

After a few more minutes of silence, Alec turned away from the city outside and Magnus looked over to find him doing a leisurely visual survey of Magnus' clothes for the evening. As Magnus turned to face him, Alec's hands came up to stroke down Magnus' arms, tangle briefly in the necklaces he was wearing, and finally settle at his waist. Thumbs rubbing the silky fabric in small circles, Alec raised his eyes to Magnus' face. "You look amazing tonight," he said with a bit of a smile, like it was a revelation, like he didn't say some variation of it on a regular basis. The words always came with the ring of incontrovertible fact and made something warm and soft settle in Magnus' stomach.

Magnus leaned in for a brief kiss before leaning back and taking a last sip of his drink. He sat the glass down on a side table and tugged Alec by the hand into a more open area of the floor. "Dance with me," he said, a flick of magic turning on the music to a clear, high voice and a slow, heavy beat. He slid up close to Alec, one thigh sliding between Alec's, arms wrapping around his shoulders and fingers sliding up into his hair.

Alec's eyes dropped to Magnus' mouth almost immediately, his own parting as if in anticipation, but they managed a full song and a half of vague grinding that had virtually nothing to do with dancing before Alec leaned in and actually kissed him. Magnus nipped at Alec's lips, then covered them again with his own, deepening the kiss into a slick, hot slide that made Alec groan and press himself impossibly closer.

With his hips and one strategically placed thigh, Magnus nudged Alec into a bit more movement, Alec's hindbrain automatically adjusting his feet to keep his balance. One day Magnus would convince Alec that years of training his body to bend to his will would translate to dancing very well if he didn't think about it so much, but for now Magnus just waited until Alec was distracted and tricked him into it. It was harder to kiss this way, though, and Magnus parted from Alec's mouth reluctantly, instead pulling him in to rest their foreheads together, gaining the intensity of Alec's gaze, the sound of his shortened breaths. The movement was itself intoxicating, the shift of thigh against pelvis, the way Alec's hand had slipped back up to Magnus' rib cage and was rubbing the fabric of his shirt over the skin underneath.

With Alec managing a basic, if decidedly intimate, forward and back, Magnus added a sway to his own hips which changed up the enticing pressure and Alec moaned softly, lashes brushing his cheeks as his eyes dipped closed for a moment. Magnus hummed briefly, smug, but it was quickly subsumed again by the rising tide of desire. He slowed their steps gradually back to swaying in place and tilted his head to kiss Alec again before tugging his head back just enough to nip along his jawline, one hand sliding down to start unbuttoning Alec's shirt. With his tongue, Magnus traced the deflect rune on Alec's neck and Alec tilted his head to the side, the submission of the gesture hitting Magnus low in his stomach before transmuting into a darker possessiveness. He nipped at the center vertice of the rune, implied acknowledgment and reward, before a quick lick over the same spot, light and gentle.

Freeing the last of Alec's shirt buttons, Magnus dropped his head down to kiss Alec's collarbones even as Alec was tugging free the tails of Magnus' shirt, hands eagerly sliding underneath and to his lower back. Magnus smiled into Alec's shoulder, said, "Shoes, darling."

Alec made a disgruntled noise as if the need to remove their shoes was a labor of Hercules, but he pulled free and dropped to the floor to untie his laces and throw his shoes and socks off to the side. Magnus had intended to do the same and then tackle Alec once they were both on the floor, but he was distracted from even starting by the vision of Alec at his feet, flushed, shirt entirely unbuttoned, half hard cock a very visible line in his dark pants. Then Alec rolled up to his knees and Magnus' breathing hitched for a second before Alec started in on Magnus' shoes. Alec looked up through his lashes, eyes glinting with all his impure thoughts, knowing full well what he was doing. Magnus' shoes having been flung over Alec's shoulders, Alec leaned in and made a show of licking along the line of Magnus' own burgeoning erection.

Magnus would've rolled his eyes but that would have meant looking away. "This is going to be a thing now, isn't it?" he said while Alec grinned and unfastened his own pants, shoving them down to his knees. Magnus wasn't actually complaining. He threaded the fingers of one hand through Alec's hair just to see the silver glint of his rings through fluffy dark locks, then he tugged gently just to watch Alec's lashes flutter for a moment.

Alec sat back and pulled at Magnus' other hand. "Lay down."

Magnus lowered himself to the rug, leaning back and propping himself up on his elbows, the chains of his necklaces sliding across his rib cage. Alec pushed Magnus' knees further apart to settle between them before shoving Magnus' shirt up and unfastening his pants, then he carefully worked down both pants and underwear before leaning in and licking a solid stripe up Magnus' erection. This time at least he slid his tongue around the tip and took it in his mouth, but it was only for a moment. Magnus' hips twitched up even as his head dropped back and he groaned, but Alec just hummed and pulled back to start on Magnus' shirt buttons from the bottom up. Magnus stared at the current chandelier a bit mournfully and pondered that he probably only had himself to blame for Alec learning to be this much a tease. The worst part was how much Magnus loved it.

Alec was nipping at each bit of skin that was being revealed as more buttons were slipped free and Magnus still had his head tipped back when Alec finished opening up his shirt and pushed apart the two halves, freeing them from under the chains to slide down Magnus' arms. Alec raised himself up and over Magnus, bracing on one hand and cupping the back of Magnus' head with the other to pull him into a deep, wet kiss. Then Alec rolled his hips, sliding their fully hard cocks together, and they gasped into each other.

Magnus distantly realized Alec's pants were still half on but he'd lost his shirt. Magnus tilted his head just so he could look down the long expanse of skin and watch the runes and faint scars rippling with the rolling muscles, watch their cocks sliding together, testicles rubbing in exquisite counterpoint. He leaned his forehead against Alec's shoulder and closed his eyes for a moment to concentrate, then summoned the lubricant from the nightstand. He felt the glamour on his eyes fritz and he let it go, looking back up at Alec who noticed immediately, his own eyes going sharp as he grinned, all teeth and love and fierce satisfaction.

Magnus was never, ever going to get over the way Alec reacted to his mark.

Magnus balanced on one elbow long enough to grab the lubricant laying next to him on the rug and smack it into Alec's chest. Alec took it and sat back to use both hands. Magnus contemplated dragging one leg up the back of Alec's thighs while he was preoccupied but then realized his pants were still around one ankle and there was no way to gracefully kick them off with Alec in the way. Who was also still wearing _his_ pants despite all the trouble they'd gone to removing shoes. Nobody's pants were protecting Magnus from rug burn but, screw it, he could heal that later. For a split second he thought to just send their pants elsewhere and had started to tangle up the magic in his fingers, but then Alec tossed the lubricant off to the side, dropped back down, and wrapped his hand around both their cocks. Magnus' brain went sideways, the magic slid free, and there was a heavy thump out beyond the living room. Magnus forgot all about pants again.

Magnus' world dissolved into the slick friction of Alec's large hands and strong grip, into messy-wet kissing in between panting for breath. Some indeterminate time later, he managed to help add fresh lubricant despite still being hampered by his shirt sleeves. The brief shock of cold quickly gave way to an entirely new level of bliss and Magnus could feel his orgasm rising up. He was torn between chasing it down and staving it off for just a few seconds longer because the ride was so very amazing, but then Alec curled down a little further and groaned Magnus' name into his ear and that was the rubicon, Magnus' orgasm an inevitable fact. It swelled up and rode up his spine and down his thighs, whiting out his brain. He arched backward, hips surging up tight against Alec's hand, every muscle tightening for several long, exquisite moments.

He sagged back down, chest heaving with the air rushing into his lungs, and grinned up at Alec's lust dazed expression. Magnus freed his own now tender cock from Alec's grip and balanced on one arm to wrap his hand around Alec's hand and cock, directing him in a slow, tight stroke. Alec whimpered, desperate for it to be faster, and Magnus leaned up to lick at his mouth, then kissed him slow and deep even as he sped up their strokes. Magnus pulled back just enough to whisper encouragement into Alec's mouth, feeling both the iron tension of his muscles and trembling in every place they touched, until Alec curled in hard on himself and came with a broken cry.

Magnus let go of him and dropped back to brace himself on both elbows even as Alec rested his forehead on Magnus' shoulder, still trembling. Magnus' arms were tired now in the fading adrenaline and he lowered himself to the rug with a wince and a small moue of discomfort.

Alec raised his head up. "Something wrong?" he asked, voice still rough, looking sweetly concerned.

Magnus sighed and admitted, "Rug burn."

Alec stared at him for a couple of seconds and then started laughing. Magnus glared up at him but Alec just toppled over to the side and kept laughing.

Magnus huffed and called for the magic to heal his skin, then cleaned up the mess of lube and semen on himself.

Alec finally managed to stop giggling even if he was still grinning. He rolled over and attempted to look repentant. He wasn't particularly successful, but he said, "Sorry."

Magnus relented and cleaned him up as well and Alec leaned over, cupping Magnus' face in one hand and kissing him gently. It was so deliciously sweet in the aftermath of such exquisite ecstasy and Magnus floated in the bliss of it for a few moments. Then Alec broke the kiss to quietly start giggling again.

Magnus squinted at him. "Next time, you're on the rug."

"Absolutely," Alec said, grinning.


	14. Chapter 14

With demons re-appearing in the city, things slowly settled back down to just average amounts of chaos.

After the successful first attempt to control the changed nature of parabatai bond, and bleeding off its excess energy, Alec and Jace had held off on sparring with it again. As Alec had told Magnus, they'd decided to first start spinning it out more often in little ways, learning to control its whole range rather than just full on or full off. Initially it was rolled into times when they were both in the Institute, but that had quickly been complicated by unexpected visitors who the younger Lightwoods (and Herondale) would prefer not notice how Alec's eyes now picked up Jace's gold shine when the bond was opened up.

Instead, they'd started experimenting with it in what Izzy had informed Magnus was "a more controlled environment". Magnus wasn't sure he'd call the loft a controlled environment, but it was at least highly unlikely random Clave representatives or elder Lightwoods would suddenly appear. The new method seemed to entail Alec doing more work from home and Jace arriving ostensibly with administrative issues in tow and sometimes Clary, Isabelle, or Max, who had been permitted to return to New York with the lull finally ended.

Most of the time, at least when Magnus was also at home, whatever combination of people had landed in the lounge did make a valiant effort at doing some work but it was eventually abandoned in favor of general hanging out. Granted, general hanging out for Shadowhunters occasionally involved clearing the floor and demonstrating various choke holds, but they were careful not to break anything. The floor below the loft was currently going unused and Magnus was beginning to think it would be a good idea to turn the whole of it into a proper space for sparring.

Alec did end up having to stay later at the Institute those nights when he'd spent mornings or afternoons at the loft, but Jace and Izzy had managed to convince him to reduce his workload. Possibly through the judicious application of guilt, given how sheepish he'd looked when relating it to Magnus. Clary picked up some of the time and responsibilities that had been pried out of Alec's hands. When Magnus asked her how she was holding up with the increased duties, she'd laughed and said, "Oh, I'm still supposed to be in art school. I wasn't planning on sleeping for at least four years anyway."

Really though, it was nice having more people coming and going, even if it was occasionally tricky when a local client arrived to find not just Alec but a living room full of sometimes rowdy Shadowhunters. Some it didn't bother, of course, but more than a few routed requests through other contacts, sought out other warlocks if it was a minor thing, or sent messages when before they would have stopped by in person. Now that Alec was around more often, though, there were other Downworlders that had started coming by the loft looking for him, or just taking advantage of him being there. It was usually little things, like Catia with her chocolate chip cookies she'd been telling Alec about the last time he'd been at Pandemonium, or Kyle who'd come for a minor cure and stayed to bitch with Alec for an hour about his kitsune neighbor that had been causing him no end of mischief. The wolf would eventually realize his neighbor had a serious crush on him, but the drama in the meantime was so far entertaining and Kyle looked quite fetching with blue hair.

One day Magnus came home from locating the skin sheddings of a particular salamander and found Alec, Jace, Clary, Max, and Madzie all in the lounge. There were reports and tablets in several piles but none were in anyone's hands. Clary's laptop was at least open, but it had been abandoned in an empty chair and she was settled in Jace's lap. Alec was sitting on the floor with Max and Madzie, who was entertaining herself by tossing balls of magic from one hand to the other and occasionally throwing them at Max for him to dodge. There weren't any scorch marks on the walls or floor behind him so she was doing well at conjuring up the harmless version.

"We're babysitting," Alec said, smiling when Madzie gave an annoyed huff over the terminology but didn't voice a protest.

Right then Magnus' phone pinged with a message from Clary that turned out to be a couple images of Alec and Madzie playing some kind of clapping game, both of them oblivious to the photo being taken. Magnus immediately made one of them his lock screen wallpaper even before he forwarded them on to Cat.

Regardless of intent, it was all having the effect of lowering Alec's overall tension levels and Magnus was pretty sure _that_ had gotten him laid on Alec's desk at the Institute (which was fantastic on multiple levels), so he was feeling pretty benevolent about life in general.

There were still busy weeks, though, and inevitably one had come up, dragging Alec into the Institute early for Clave business and keeping him there late helping coordinate patrols managing a rash of minor demons. Magnus had been strengthening some of the local power draws, restocking some seriously depleted ingredients, juggling a dozen client requests, and found himself refereeing a couple of squabbles because they'd stopped by looking for an absent Alec. By Friday, though, Alec had managed to send the Clave representative packing back to Idris and the Downworld had gone quiet again, or as quiet as it ever was. As soon as Alec made it home that evening, he'd changed and they'd gone out for the 'I haven't seen you in the better part of a week and we sleep in the same bed' kind of date.

Alec had been relatively quiet while they were out and Magnus had put it down to the stresses of the week. He had suggested they walk back afterward and Alec had agreed. They hadn't planned on doing anything once they made it home other than making out for a few hours, but halfway to the loft Alec had cocked his head to the side, frowned, and said, "Jace is going to be waiting for us."

"I can open a portal?"

"No, it's not an emergency, and he'll know if we rush." Alec's thumb started an anxious rubbing over the back of Magnus' hand he was holding. "There was just a lot of Herondale stuff that came up this week with the Clave rep. Something must have happened or been said a couple of days ago, I don't even know what, but he's been handling it."

"And now he's not?" Magnus asked. He was, admittedly, rather curious as to what exactly Alec was sensing. The bond wasn't opened up at all so far as he knew but Alec could obviously feel at least some of Jace's distress and a general direction.

"No, or he's finally letting through that he isn't. I could feel the edges of it before, but it's like he's let that wall thin out."

"So, he's… opening up? Asking for help?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Alec said. "I don't think he's ever done that. Not for something like this, not with me. I mean, Clary's there a lot now but it used to be he'd only come find me on these nights to pick a fight. Mostly he'd go find Izzy if he wanted a distraction, or just go looking for whatever trouble he could find. He never lets me fix this."

"I don't think you can fix this, sweetheart."

Alec made a frustrated noise. "Not _fix_ fix it, just, I don't know, make it not so bad. It's not like I don't know it's there."

Magnus smiled and lifted Alec's hand to press a kiss to the back of it.

They found Jace sitting on the floor of the lounge with an open bottle in front of him and holding a partially filled glass. The liquor Magnus kept at the loft was generally all of higher quality but the bottle Jace was drinking from was the lowest rung of the selection.

Magnus waved off the wards' concerned buzzing that he had a feeling was less about warning of someone else's presence and more concern for Jace's obvious discontent. He'd never set them to let Jace through in the first place, they just did by now, and indeed the door automatically buzzed open for half a dozen people at this point besides Magnus and Alec. It'd been years ago that he'd set them and he'd been half drunk and in a wildly unhappy stretch at the time, so he still wasn't sure precisely what he'd done to make them the way they were, but he'd have to raze them and start over to fix it. He never seemed to get around to it though. If he were being honest with himself, as long as they protected from random break ins, he wasn't sure he'd have the heart to do so.

Alec stood in the archway and waited.

"I haven't been here long," Jace said without looking up, taking a sip from the glass.

Alec sighed, draped the jacket he was carrying over the back of a chair, and went to sit on the couch behind Jace, rubbing at his shoulders. "I could tell it was building up."

"I know," Jace said. "That's why I'm here."

"Wait, are you saying you're trying to make _me_ feel better?"

"I can feel your mother hen tendencies hovering in the back of my brain. It's very annoying."

"Whatever," Alec scoffed, but there was a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth.

Magnus retrieved the bottle of whiskey from in front of Jace and slipped into the kitchen to mix up something soothing rather than purely anesthetic. Jace started to make a disgruntled sound when Magnus tugged the glass out of his hand a few minutes later, exchanging it for hot chocolate, but it cut off when he got a whiff of the steam. Alec could apparently smell the hot alcohol as well judging from the wrinkled nose. Magnus left them to it and holed up in his workroom with a text that had fallen into his hands last week describing a potion he was halfway through brewing.

A short while later, Magnus' phone pinged with a message from Alec in the living room that said, **_told C to come over after patrol with a bag_ ** followed by, **_they'll be in the spare room_ **

Well after midnight, Magnus felt a portal with Clary's unique signature start to spill open outside the loft entrance. The potion was at a stage that would keep, so he turned the flame off and covered it for the night before walking out to the entry and fully opening the door that had already swung ajar.

The portal snapped shut behind Clary, leaving a tired looking Shadowhunter stripped down to a grimy, sweaty tank top and black cargo pants on Magnus' doorstep. She was carrying an overnight bag and a pair boots he assumed she'd taken off before portaling through considering she was down to socks on her feet. "Hey, Magnus," she said, setting the boots down just outside the door and then leaning in to gingerly kiss him on the cheek without otherwise touching him.

"Ichor or hazardous substances?" Magnus asked, eyeing her clothes.

She shook her head. "No, just filthy. I've been rolling in a couple different alleys tonight and, honestly, one was more than enough."

Magnus grimaced, thinking of the drizzle earlier in the afternoon that had been just enough to mobilize all the dirt in the city. "Yes, that would certainly do it." He stepped back and let her pass through, following her into the living room.

Alec and Jace were both on the couch, Alec sitting tucked up at the far end and Jace sitting sideways at the other with his legs stretched out. Jace, with his back to the archway, didn't notice them come in and was doing some sort of demonstration with imaginary weapons that he seemed very passionate about while Alec sat there with a bemused expression.

"Anything I need to know?" Alec asked, interrupting Jace and scanning Clary as she walked up to the couch.

She shook her head. "You're going to yell at me but it can wait until tomorrow. Two demons dispatched and everyone accounted for with no major injuries."

Alec lifted an eyebrow but didn't request further explanation.

Jace had rolled his head back to look at her and was blinking in confusion. "You came all the way over here to report in person?"

She just kissed him briefly and smiled. "I can smell myself right now and it's very unpleasant so I'm going to go shower."

Clary disappeared off to the bathroom and Jace looked back at Alec. "Yeah," Alec said, "you're staying here tonight by the way."

"Alec—"

Alec held up a hand. "Humor me, please." Then he added, "I'll make waffles."

Jace looked at him for a moment, then finally said, "Okay, I can be bribed."

Magnus sat down on one of the chairs opposite the couch as Jace resumed his explanation. He thought for a moment of making tea, or possibly nightcaps, but Clary at least had looked exhausted and, after the past week, Alec didn't look a great deal more alert. By the time a much cleaner Clary reappeared to drag Jace off to bed, even Magnus found the week catching up with him and he and Alec made their own way to bed.

Curled up together under the covers, Magnus was floating in a content haze when Alec said, "Sorry for the night not going as planned."

Magnus smiled without opening his eyes. "Plans are made to be changed. I think the night went just fine and turned out pretty well, all considered."

"Yeah," Alec said, "I think so too."


	15. Chapter 15

There'd been a moment when Alec hadn't believed him when Jace had called in to report that they had three demons pinned down in a dead end alley and needed backup.

"You can't handle three demons in a dead end alley with a full patrol?"

"As much as I hate to admit it, no, not these ones."

They were large, and proving tricky to dispatch, but the annoying thing was the rain. Jace's least favorite conditions were drizzling rain. Bitter cold slowed demons down most of the time, the same for downpours, and heat made everyone mean enough that the fight was inevitably a welcome relief. But drizzling rain just made things harder to grip and completely screwed with their night vision. They'd managed to break the two working lights to keep the glare down, but rain was still like a thousand streaks of silver everywhere he looked.

"They can't seem to gain height and we've got a temporary block on the alley, so they're not going anywhere as long as we can keep them from battering it too hard, but that means we're trapped in here with them." Jace slashed at a tentacle that slithered out from the energy cloud enveloping the demon on the right, but the tentacle pulled back quick enough to avoid getting cut. "And have I mentioned the visibility is shit? Because the visibility is shit."

"You did mention that, yes. I've got the maps up."

"Wait, weren't you and Magnus going out tonight? Why are you in Ops anyway?"

"I was finishing a critical report," Alec said, suddenly sounding very invested in data interpretation. The bond was still only cracked open but Jace could feel a thin thread of guilt seeping through, which probably meant Magnus had come to fetch him because Alec lost track of time.

Jace rolled his eyes. "We need at least four reinforcements, especially someone up high. I don't know what the visibility is going to be up there, it'll be down into the dark through the rain, but there's not much room to maneuver down here."

Another voice suddenly came over the line to say, "Reinforcements are on the way. Alec, I can handle this. Gear up and go be a parabatai."

"Lydia!" Jace said. "I thought I saw you talking to Izzy earlier."

"Indeed. I came back with Max after his training run and was intending to visit with Kit, but he's been otherwise occupied so far."

Jace snorted as, next to him, Kit parried three tentacle jabs in quick succession and hissed back at the attacking demon with attitude. Kit was extra annoyed because he'd already tried just going through the energy cloud that surrounded the demons like black smoke and he'd skittered back yelling in pain before he'd even managed to make contact, his sword on the ground and hand a mess. A couple of iratzes had fixed his hand as far as they could tell, and they'd retrieved the sword, but it was clear that straight through was both a suicide mission and probably wouldn't even work.

A few minutes of gaining and losing ground later there was a flash of a portal on the lower rooftop to the south of the alley, runes still being activated like fireflies in the night. The walls between he and Alec had already dropped and Jace could sense him up there, the bond shifting restlessly between them in bloodthirsty anticipation. A half dozen more bodies descended down in the periphery of his night vision and there was the sound of a whip snapping out followed by the crackle of adamas meeting demon energy. Alec's half of the bond swirled up around him with intent and Jace just had time to take two steps back, Kit automatically moving in to cover him and Izzy emerging from behind him to step up on the other side.

Jace braced his feet and let him mind sink into the bond like a trust fall.

The parabatai pulled an arrow from his quiver and settled it in place. The three demons were now outnumbered four to one with ten bodies on the ground including Magnus, and two archers up high. They were very good odds but the demons were twice the height of a human, easily half their mass made up of the damaging energy cloud, and vibrating at a fairly high rate of speed. He stepped back up between Izzy and Kit, sword raised, even as Izzy lashed out her whip again, testing the boundaries of the physical form within the dense black cloud.

Up high he said "Stay here" to Lena, who nodded at him without looking away from tracking the darkness in the alley down the length of an arrow. There was slightly less glare looking down but the demons were vague shapes at best and they and the rain blocked off visibility of most of the alley. Shooting at the shifting patches of black came with a greater chance of hitting a Shadowhunter than of hitting a demon. He crossed the length of the roof, dropped down over the side to perch on the wall that blocked off the east end of the alley, and waited.

"We could evacuate the back of the alley and strafe it with arrows," Izzy said.

He shook his head. "We'd have to shoot from the south and there's cover in the north corner from that angle. Shooting from the back would work but the barrier won't hold up to all three of them."

Izzy flicked her whip out again. It couldn't land killing blows but it had better reach than a sword and seemed to annoy them more. Much the same, Nara was wielding her staff from the depths of the north corner and there were flashes each time she connected with the energy cloud of the demon closest to her, each blow getting a retaliatory tentacle strike. Sam was holding ground next to her with a sword and there was a screech across the pavement for each blow of Nara's staff.

The parabatai darted in and stabbed into the center mass of the middle demon before dancing back again, pain sparking along his now bloody knuckles, Kit's sword cutting short the tentacle that made it a hair's breadth from his feet. His sword had made contact, not much, just a glancing blow, but definitely contact. He did it again. And again. A half dozen strikes later he was sure he could tell the width of the form within the cloud, but he still didn't have the reach for a killing blow.

Izzy struck out with her whip towards the demon on the right and, as before, there was no form for it to lash, just a flash of adamas meeting demon energy. But this time a burst of blue magic hit the opposite side just a half moment later. He yelled out, "Izzy! Magnus! Again!"

She sent out the whip, Magnus sent the same ball of magic, and the demon had retreated a couple steps but _there_ , it froze, for just a few seconds. He rose up from his crouch and nocked an arrow. He still couldn't see the twenty feet down into the darkness, but he had two points and a straight line between them. He drew back the arrow, adjusted for the rain, the breeze, for gravity. He yelled out, "Again!"

There was the crack of Izzy's whip, the blue flare of magic, a final adjustment of his position. He lunged forward with his sword to draw the demon's attention and released an arrow straight at his own heart.

The demon rippled for a full five seconds before shattering into ash and coating everything in the alley. The remaining two demons hissed louder, their movements getting more frantic. They had more room to move but at least they didn't expand in size. Izzy's whip rattled threateningly, the rasp of scales under the sounds of the rain and the hissing of the demons. They reoriented on what had been the middle demon, trusting Magnus was doing the same. "Ready?" Izzy asked, once she'd rubbed the back of one hand across her eyes and spit out the ash that had gotten in her mouth.

He nocked another arrow and drew in a deep breath. "Go," he said on the ground, and up above he exhaled. Izzy's whip lashed out, Magnus' magic a heartbeat behind, and again he lunged towards his own arrow. The second demon rippled and shattered.

"Two down, one to go," Kit said, closing up the circle they formed around the last demon.

He nocked a third arrow but didn't yet raise his bow. The ash and drizzle were making things increasingly slick and there were flashes of light in the darkness; a few more sure-footed runes being activated. The energy around the last demon was moving faster, panicking over the death of the other two, sensing its own doom. He lunged past Kit and stabbed into the mass, only managing to graze the side of the form within when he'd expected a shallow but solid hit. "Nara!" he called out, "With Izzy!" There were two deep thunks of an adamas staff striking the ground in acknowledgment.

He raised his bow, inhaled. "Now!" he said, Izzy's whip already moving even as sparks flew from Nara's staff and blue magic crashed into and cascaded over the swirling smoke surface. He'd already released the arrow. There was a couple of moments when everything stopped and he was, for a moment, certain he missed. Certain that if he looked down there was going to be an arrow sticking out of his own chest. But then there was a loud shriek and the demon started rippling. He realized he could see the flash of an arrow within the energy cloud, too much movement for it to be deeply embedded. He gauged the location of the arrowhead, dropped down to one knee, drew the small dagger from his ankle, and threw it.

The demon shattered.

A cheer went up in the alley and he dropped down from the wall as Kit offered him a hand up from where he was still kneeling. All the surfaces in the alley were now coated with three demons worth of ash that was melting in the rain and turning to sludge. Everyone was coated in streaks of liquefied demon, had it caked in their eyelashes and seeping into their ears and down their collars, weapons more likely to be dropped now that no one was actively compensating for the loss of grip. Magnus looked as bad as everyone else but somehow it seemed even worse on him with his hair plastered down and shoved back out of his eyes, his clothes entirely ruined.

"Call it in," he said to Izzy, retrieving arrows and his dagger. He activated his own iratze to take care of the damage to his knuckles while drawing one with his stele on Kit who'd just realized that his hand hadn't been quite as healed earlier as he'd thought.

Having cleaned the dagger as well as he could on his less filthy undershirt, he was re-sheathing it while inspecting the arrows when he heard Izzy say, "Huh." He looked up and found her and Magnus both watching him.

"What?" he asked, a sudden awareness tapping along the edges of his consciousness that it was said in two different voices.

"Oh, wow," Izzy said, "this is fascinating but you two might want to put the bond away now."

He blinked at her, looked down at himself — at his two selves — and the world slid sideways as the bond fell back slowly, _parabatai_ becoming _Alec and Jace_ , and then, a deep breath later, Jace resettled in his own skin with just one set of sensory inputs. He felt the bond curl up between them like a contented cat, all but purring in satisfaction for a kill well executed. Alec straightened up from his crouch and Jace handed him his arrows.

"All better?" Magnus asked as Izzy managed to coax her whip into finally closing up and settling back around her wrist, even if it was with a disgruntled rustling, probably irritated by the ash sure to be between its scales.

Jace scoffed. "Please, you say that as if I'm not already perfect."

Alec rolled his eyes and sighed.

Izzy smirked. "Well, back to normal anyway."


	16. Chapter 16

The only good thing about exploding demons in a back alley was that it meant the clean-up needed was non-existent. Well, site clean-up, at any rate. People clean-up was a different matter entirely. Magnus shoved his disgusting hair back out of his eyes again and watched Alec look around at his cadre of impressively filthy soldiers, scowl down at himself, and grimace at Magnus' own condition. He started to say, "Magnus—" but Magnus just held up a hand and spun open a portal.

Once Alec had all his ducks herded up, Magnus led them through, taking a side trip on the way to the Institute to an isolated cove on a small island in the Pacific. Everyone was still going to have to shower thoroughly and decontaminate their gear (although it turned out Izzy's whip was an enthusiastic swimmer and quite possibly thought Magnus was its new best friend), but they were all rinsed off and at least they weren't going to trail the mess all through the Institute in the process. They all trooped inside with holsters and boots in hand, Alec carrying his quiver and frowning down into it in dismay.

In the operations room, Magnus greeted Lydia, who he'd only seen in passing earlier. After a couple minutes of catching up, he left her holding a sopping wet and impish Kit at arm's length while Alec gave her the short version of events. It was still technically date night, so rather than portaling back to the loft where there was a distinct lack of Alec, Magnus padded barefoot through the hallways to Alec's Institute bedroom in search of a hot shower and something to wear. Without the camouflage of the patrol group, there were a few side-eyes over his marked state of dishabille. He just sauntered slower and smirked more.

Alec joined him before Magnus had even finished his shower. Stripping off wet clothes and piling everything in a corner of the bathroom with his boots, Alec said, "Thank you for that." He spent a minute rinsing some of the ocean salt off and the last traces of ash before reaching for the soap. "The alternative was hosing everyone off outside and that's never fun in late fall."

Magnus, who'd been distracted halfway through reaching for a towel by a naked Alec with water sluicing down his body, shuddered at the thought and said, "No, I would imagine not."

Once they were clean and dry, Magnus put on some of Alec's sleep clothes he kept stashed at the Institute for the occasional emergency night. Although Alec's pants were a bit long in the leg, the two of them weren't too terribly different in size and the stretchy knitwear fit fine. Alec had just pulled on his own clothing when there was a knock at the door which turned out to be Jace and Izzy along with Clary, freshly back from her own far less exciting patrol, and a pile of take-out bags that had Max behind them. Max didn't look worse for the wear from his latest training run that had required his presence in Idris, but he did look tired and grumpy.

As soon as they all landed on the floor and the boxes were spread out, Max immediately dug into one and attempted to eat three spring rolls at once. When Alec suggested maybe one at a time might work better, Max managed to swallow his mouthful and said, "I've literally eaten raw lichen today. Off a rock. I didn't waste the water to rinse it first."

"That's why you make friends with an archer," Jace said with the authority of someone who'd done exactly that. "Rabbits are a lot easier to come by when you don't have to lay snares." Alec rolled his eyes.

"We were racing through the eastern caves. Not a lot of rabbits. And they staggered our start times and locations so we couldn't team up without taking a taking a big risk on our finishing time."

Izzy winced. "Those caves are a pain in the ass to track through."

Max nodded in emphatic agreement. "Yes, yes they are. And the booby traps were like every ten metres so I'd get locked back on the next target and then have to dodge surprise spikes."

"Wait," Clary said, chopsticks pausing in midair, "surprise spikes?"

Max shrugged. "Or acid drops, or miasmas, or glamours hiding sudden drop offs, or whatever."

"What would have happened if you _didn't_ dodge in time?" Clary asked, sweet summer child that she was.

Max blinked at her in confusion, then brightened. "Oh! We were allowed iratzes for this one."

They looked at each other for a minute. Max took a large bite and squinted at her.

Clary finally said, slowly, "Iratzes don't fix everything."

"Well no," Max said, "but the really tricky part is you can't hold your stele, a weapon, and track all at the same time, so you have to be able to get to it but not lose it, you know?"

Clary stared at him like she couldn't decide if he were deliberately misleading her or if this was one of those things that only someone raised a Shadowhunter would think was a logical thought process. Magnus could have told her it was the latter but watching it gradually dawn on her that he was completely serious was far more entertaining.

"How many iratzes did you use?" Alec asked.

"Two," Max said with a pout. "It would have been one, but I couldn't climb with a fractured arm."

Alec, in a blatant display of the culture he'd grown up in, was apparently amused by this answer. "A fractured bone still counts as an iratze even if you don't use it until after the exercise."

"And two is still good, Ma—" Izzy started to say, and then she stopped and rolled her eyes. "Gisele only needed one didn't she."

Max huffed. "She was the only one who didn't fall in the pit so she had the fastest time, too."

Clary made a small, strangled noise and stuffed some noodles in her mouth. She had been wearing runes for over a year now but she was definitely still coming to grips with the finer points of Shadowhunter training methodology. Clary was perfectly happy to put adult Shadowhunters through their paces, and then some, but being raised in the mundane world hadn't prepared her for the Idris concept of childhood. To be fair, nothing prepared you for that except being from Idris.

Magnus could sympathize; he'd known enough Shadowhunters in his life to be well aware of how outrageous their training scenarios could be, but sometimes it hit him all over again that the nephilim idea of reasonable risk for a half-grown child was utter insanity. He remained baffled how a majority of them survived to adulthood.

Izzy gestured between Jace and Alec with her chopsticks. "Okay, time to fess up. How'd it go tonight with the bond? It _looked_ like it went smooth other than the delay in pulling back out of it."

Alec looked at her for a minute and then over at Max and said to him, "Same rules as the loft: this conversation doesn't go outside the people in this room. It is definitely not for mentioning in Idris. Got it?"

Max sat up straighter, suddenly serious, and nodded. Magnus was a bit surprised; he fully agreed but he hadn't known they'd codified it as a restriction.

"It went fine," Jace said. "It definitely helped the whole visibility issue. I couldn't— Alec couldn't actually see what he was shooting at. The visibility up high was just as bad as on the ground."

Izzy lifted an eyebrow. "Well that has some interesting possibilities but you're not getting that much information all the time. You have to have some kind of control over it."

"Yeah, of course," Alec said. "Nobody needs to live in Jace's brain all the time. Jace does and look how he turned out."

"Hey now," Jace protested.

"Okay, but can you describe _how?_ You have to be visualizing something."

"The bond's always there," Alec said. "It always used to rise when we needed it and fall back when we didn't, but now there's something extra to it. Like it's taken on a life of its own. Now even when it's at its lowest, there's still a lot coming through. The wall we put up between us is what keeps it from being too much."

Jace picked up the answer. "We can make the wall between us thicker or thinner and most of the time Alec's _there_ but he's pretty distant. Like now, I'm not really getting anything unless I pay attention. In a fight, there's nothing between us and we're all the way in. If Alec's being an idiot like he was after that dehydrated shape shifter, then the wall is ten foot thick and he needs smacked upside the head."

Alec made a vague noise of protest and was suddenly concentrating intently on finding the perfect bite of spicy shrimp in the box he was holding.

"I had a headache for a _week,_ Alec," Jace said irritably.

"It was more like 6 days," Alec muttered, looking up through his eyelashes.

Jace, inexplicably, pointed at him and said, "Both kneecaps."

Even more inexplicably, Alec ducked his head the way he did when he was hiding the urge to smile.

Apparently there'd been tensions Magnus hadn't known about between the demon that broke the lull and the night of Pandemonium experiment. When they'd shown up at the loft that night, Alec had looked like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders; he'd also been agreeing with Jace far too easily to be feeling anything but guilty over something. Jace, for his part, had been defensively sharp around the edges and had found a dozen reasons to lay a hand on Alec, like he needed to reassure himself his parabatai was still there.

At the time, Magnus had assumed they'd finally talked things over since the storm had clearly passed and their pro forma bickering had been layered with a distinctly relieved flavor.

"Good fences make good neighbors," Magnus said back in the here and now.

Alec, Jace, Izzy, and Max all stopped what they were doing and looked at him as if he'd gone mad. "It's a mundane saying," he explained, "about the benefits of boundaries when you live close together. Or possibly think together in this case."

Alec frowned over it before finally venturing, "It's not… wrong."

"Aw," Clary said, "did it hurt to say that?"

Alec looked at her for a long moment, then just said, "Eat your dinner, Fray."

Clary gave him a cheeky grin and took an obnoxiously large bite.

Magnus tangled one leg with Alec's and stole a dumpling from Izzy's box to her outraged squawking. The sudden, rapid evolution of the bond over the last year seemed concerning to him, but hopefully it was just due to exceptional circumstances. At any rate, it was stabilized for the moment and, really, Shadowhunters could find plenty of trouble on their own, there was no use borrowing it ahead of time.

**Author's Note:**

> Jace is dealing with some PTSD related to his childhood. It's less specific than the show, so I'm not officially tagging for it, but that he continues to deal with the negative effects comes up several times.


End file.
